[HouTango-L] Night of the ñoquis

[A. Lester Buck III]

Sept. 27, 2006, 5:54AM
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/food/4210965.html  
(online version includes three nice photos in a small slide show)


Night of the ñoquis
===================

Argentines gather each month to make and eat these traditional
dumplings for good luck

By PEGGY GRODINSKY

Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

The invitation came by e-mail.

"Come celebrate the Argentinian tradition of ñoquis and create
more abundance in your life,'' it said. "When: August 29. What
to bring: A dollar bill to put under your plate. $<heart>$.''

Ñoquis, it seemed, was Spanish for gnocchi, a dumpling eaten
throughout Italy.  Ñoquis Night, I learned, is an Argentine
tradition: If you eat ñoquis on the 29th of each month and tuck a
bill under your plate, you'll be in the money for the next 30 days.

Nobody knows for sure how the tradition began, but Maria Baez
Kijac's explanation in The South American Table has the ring
of truth: "The idea is that one's pockets are almost empty at
the end of the month, and potatoes and flour are about the only
ingredients left in the pantry.''

Ñoquis reached Argentina with the more than 1.5 million Italians
who immigrated there between 1870 and 1920. If Gnocchi Night
ever existed in Italy, it has vanished. Today the dumplings are
ubiquitous in Argentina. Houstonian and Argentine expatriate Toy
Brando Halsey called them her homeland's "love food.''  As she
explained it, people crave ñoquis when it's cold and dreary out,
when they're sick, lovesick or just plain sad.

Her ebullient sister Lucy Keeper, who moved to Houston more than
40 years ago, was to host the evening and oversee the party
décor while Brando Halsey, a keen cook whom friends call the
"ñoquis queen,'' would prepare the food with several Argentine
friends. The menu was homey and uncomplicated: three types of
ñoquis with four sauces, vitel toné (a cold dish with layers of
beef and mayonnaise-tuna sauce), salad and flan. A caterer would
provide traditional Argentinean finger sandwiches to start the
meal and shortbread with dulce de leche to end it.

On the Sunday preceding the 29th, everybody gathered in Keeper's
kitchen to cook. The group session was arranged for my convenience;
normally, Brando Halsey, Alicia Leichen and Lucy Marzeniuk each
make a batch of ñoquis or sauce at home.

Of course, they could buy them or eat at a restaurant on the 29th,
as many Argentines do. If you check the fresh-pasta aisle of any
grocery in Houston on the 27th or 28th, like as not you'll see
Argentine expats - estimates put the Houston community between
4,000 and 8,000 - reaching for a package. But, Brando Halsey
cautioned, "The tradition says (that) if you don't make them
yourself, you don't have such good luck.''

For this group, making ñoquis is old hat. They shift so fast from
mixing, kneading and rolling to cutting and shaping that their
movements are blurry. The cheerful chatter, in Spanish and English,
matches the production pace. After deftly rolling two cylinders
about the thickness and length of a medium cigar, Marzeniuk lines
them up and slices bite-size ñoquis at a rapid clip.

Does everyone in Argentina know how to make these?

"¡Si!" the cooks call out in unison.

"We've been making ñoquis since we were little," said Brando
Halsey, who delights in sharing the traditions of her homeland;
later, she shows me her collection of mate gourd cups and her
favorite Argentine cookbooks. "That's the first thing you (learn
to) make."

Children start by learning to shape the ñoquis, either by flicking
the dumplings off the tines of a fork or using a ñoquera, a small
wooden block with grooves that gives the nuggets the traditional
indented form. The ridges will help the sauce cling.

While Leichen tends to the Bolognese sauce, Brando Halsey and
Marzeniuk sort the ñoquis into plastic bags. There's potato (the
traditional flavor), sweet potato and ricotta. The women will
dump them into big pots of boiling water to cook until they bob
to the surface. Then they'll scoop them out with slotted spoons.


Forget leftovers
================

At that point, you'd better eat them "pretty close to right away,"
Brando Halsey says. "Leftover ñoqui is no good."

Forget about asking for recipes.

How many potatoes do you need to make potato ñoquis?

Two big potatoes will make enough for six, Brando Halsey answers.

What type?

Russet. She's learned that through trial and error. "If you make
it with white potatoes or the little red potatoes, the whole
thing goes . . . " -- she makes a sound like a tire deflating.

How much flour?

"As much as you need."

When I plead for specifics, she adds, "Make it just dry enough
to not be sticky.  You cannot go wrong."

Knead it until the consistency is right, adds Leichen.

How will I know when that is?

Brando Halsey has me touch the sweet potato dough. *Not* like that,
she says.  "It's too soft."

Why not add flour?

"You can only put so much flour."

What about cheese? How much of that?

"You use a small container of ricotta and one egg. Oh, I'm sorry,
I forgot to say the egg (for the potato ñoquis). Otherwise there
is nothing to congeal."

Brando Halsey pauses. "I'm sure there is a recipe." Later, she
sends me recipes from an Argentine cookbook, "Pasta y Pizzas"
by Choly Berreteaga.


Ñoquis groupies
===============

It's Ñoquis Night. Sixteen people are coming to dinner -- a small
crowd, says Keeper, who has entertained as many as 30 on the
occasion. The guests mill about her huge, festive upstairs room,
nibbling on slightly sweet sandwiches filled with hearts of palm,
hard-boiled egg and strips of roasted red pepper. One guest
introduces himself and the others as "ñoquis groupies. Wherever
there (are) ñoquis, we show up."

O Sole Mio plays in the background. The long narrow dinner table
is scattered with gold-wrapped candy coins and blown-up photocopied
$1,000,000 bills.  Underneath each plate lies a dollar bill folded
in the shape of a ñoqui, and over each a money-themed fortune:
"Success is your default page," "You are swimming in cash,"
"You are experiencing an economic healing."

Brando Halsey's son Dennis Brando, a chiropractor, is about to
open a new office, so he's looking for luck. So is Elizabeth
Register, Brando Halsey's sister-in-law. She lost her house and
all her belongings to Katrina exactly one year before.

So this ñoquis-eating business really works?

"Oh, God, yes!" Keeper says. "You can create your own reality. In
that moment, with intention, there is a part of your head that
says,'OK. I'll be fine for the next 30 days.' And it's a great
way to meet your friends every month and have a wonderful meal."

Some people keep their ñoquis dollar in their wallet for years,
placing it under their plate each month. Others use a fresh dollar
each time.

Brando Halsey hesitates. "My ñoquis dollar was stolen,
unfortunately, when we went to Spain." The family vacationed
there last summer. "They stole all our cash. We lost quite a bit."

"Her beliefs are not as strong as mine," Keeper teases. "They
didn't take a penny of mine."

In either case, guest Patti Gras thinks the tradition is about
"prosperity.  That's really the word -- not money. It's happiness
through more than just material things, more than just wealth,
kind of the spiritual way of looking at the word 'prosperity'
because you can have all the money in the world and be miserable."

You can't be miserable eating these ñoquis, however, and when
the dancing starts after dinner, it's clear that nobody is.


Pick a favorite
===============

My favorite may be the sweet potato version with salsa blanca
(white sauce), but it's a tough call. The pesto sauce is
wonderfully garlicky and fresh. The hearty, rustic Bolognese with
potato ñoquis is indeed love, or at least comfort, in a bowl. The
ricotta ñoquis are so fluffy, I can't seem to stop eating them.
Earlier, the women described a good ñoqui as neither too tough
nor too soft, neither too big nor too heavy. The sauce, they said,
is all-imporant.

Our meal is all that and more.

"You asked, 'What is a good ñoqui?' " Keeper reminds me. "By the
time you've had the ñoquis, you've already had two glasses of wine,
so just about any ñoqui is a good ñoqui."

The conversation turns to the slang usage of the word "ñoquis." In
Argentina it's a not-very-nice name for people who hold government
jobs through nepotism and never show up to do them. "Lazy bums,"
as Gras translates it. On the 29th of each month, however, they
dependably make an appearance to collect their paycheck.

Suddenly, the ñoquis-eating tradition seems, if no less delicious,
certainly less light-hearted. After all, many of the people in
this room left Argentina because life promised to be better in
the United States.

Brando Halsey, like her son, a chiropractor, followed her first
husband, a physician, during the Argentine "brain drain" 45 years
ago. "Everybody wanted to come!" she says.

A few years later, Keeper, now a real-estate agent, followed
her older sister to help care for her new baby niece. Finding
opportunities plentiful in Houston, she stayed.

Leichen came about five years ago at the urging of her son who was
already here and worried about the economy there. In Argentina,
it seems, dreaming of prosperity 30 days at a time is serious
business.

"It's a country with tremendous potential, but it never
gets to reach that potential, whether because of corruption,
lack of infrastructure, for political reasons or perhaps a
kind of a fatalistic mind-set among Argentinians," Gras says
later. "Prosperity is a huge frustration for Argentina, because
it has everything it needs to reach prosperity, but it never
gets there."

When I repeat that comment to Keeper and wonder how it relates
to Ñoquis Night, Keeper says, "You have to keep the hope." Her
sister adds, "Yes, if nothing else."

peggy.grodinsky at chron.com