Joshua Kovacs is 16 years old and has been cooking since he was about 7. He does a lot of the food preparation in his home. Learning to cook wasn’t a matter of survival for him, but it was a matter of enriching life.
His parents cooked from time to time, he told me in a recent interview. Unfortunately, he sighed, “The food was pretty boring. I’d had enough of chili and spaghetti.”
Josh lives in New York City but is spending the summer with his grandmother, Betsy Kovacs in Heath. It was she who taught him to cook, he said, along with his Aunt Kati. According to her nephew, Kati Kovacs can cook just about anything.
The three tend to go a little crazy in the kitchen at Christmas time, he informed me. They have developed their own way of celebrating the holidays, known as “Boss Fest” because each of them wants to be boss in the kitchen.
“All three generations say, ‘I’m the chef,’” laughed Josh.
Josh has also mastered a number of culinary techniques and recipes by watching videos on YouTube and other social media channels.
His online and human teachers have taught him well, photographer Paul Franz and I discovered when we watched him throw together gnocchi in his grandmother’s sunny kitchen.
I noted that I had never made gnocchi and that I was a little daunted by the process. Josh seemed utterly relaxed yet still precise as he threw together the little Italian dumplings and dished them up with two different types of sauce.
The word “gnocchi” comes from the Italian word “nocca,” a Lombard term that means “knuckles,” I learned. Lombardy is a region in the north of Italy. Josh’s little creations were indeed the size of a large knuckle.
Josh made them with ricotta cheese instead of the often traditional potato. He explained that ricotta dumplings are easier to knead and shape than those made with potato. The texture seemed a little lighter as well.
The young chef carefully kneaded and rolled out the gnocchi on his grandmother’s floured countertop. I thought he was remarkably neat, perhaps as a result of his grandmother’s warning that he had better clean up perfectly when he was finished.
Nevertheless, he perceived the process as far from orderly.
“It gets very messy, which is what I love about it,” he enthused. “I think cooking should be messy.”
As jazz played in the background, I asked Josh whether he knew what he wanted to do when he got out of school.
He told me he has a lot of interests, including robotics, literature, philosophy, product design and engineering. He is keeping his options open. “I’m into a lot of things,” he admitted.
The past year has been weird for Joshua as it has for just about everybody. He physically attended school a couple of days a week for a few hours. (There was no eating allowed in the building because of the mask mandate.)
During his at-home days, he often spent a lot of time cooking in the middle of the day. “Lunchtime came at the expense of history,” he admitted.
He is enjoying being out of the city with his dog, spending time with his grandparents, and cooking up a storm in their kitchen. He does occasionally get a little carried away, he told me.
“My problem is, I make very complicated things, and I use a lot of dishes,” declared Joshua Kovacs.
Clearly, however, that’s just fine with his grandparents. And the gnocchi were just fine with Paul and me.
Ingredients:
For the gnocchi:
1 pound ricotta cheese
1 egg
flour as necessary (start with ¾ cup)
3 ounces freshly grated Parmesan cheese (optional)
For the pesto-green bean sauce:
a few more green beans than gnocchi, cut on the diagonal.
homemade pesto to taste
freshly grated Parmesan cheese to taste
For the brown-butter sage sauce:
2 tablespoons butter, divided
2 handsful of thin shallot or onion slices
1 large clove garlic, minced
5 good-sized sage leaves, torn or cut into strips
Parmesan to taste
Instructions:
To make the gnocchi, whisk together the ricotta and egg. Sift ¾ cup flour on top, and stir in the parmesan if you want it. Sift flour onto a board, and transfer the gnocchi onto the board.
Using well-floured hands, knead the dough for 2 to 3 minutes, sifting on additional flour in ¼-cup increments as needed until the dough no longer sticks to your hands. Form the dough into a rough log, and cut the log into four pieces.
Roll each piece up into a snake about ½-inch in diameter. Cut the snakes into ½-to ¾-inch pieces. Leave the pieces as is, roll them into balls, put a thumbprint on each one, or indent them with grooves using a small fork. (The last technique takes practice but helps the gnocchi absorb sauce, Josh explained.)
If you wish to save some gnocchi to freeze, sift flour onto a cookie sheet and place the gnocchi on top in a single layer; then sift on a little more flour. Put the cookie sheet into the freezer for an hour; then transfer the gnocchi to freezer bags and return them to the freezer. They can be cooked whenever you’re ready.
To cook the unfrozen gnocchi, boil a large pot of salted water. Gently add the gnocchi. When they come to the surface (probably in 2 minutes or less), remove them with a slotted spoon or spatula.
Serve the gnocchi with either of the two sauces below or the sauce of your choice.
The gnocchi recipe yields from 4 to 12 servings, depending on appetite (Josh is a teenage boy so he can eat a quarter of it easily) and whether it is an appetizer or a main course.
To make the pesto-green bean sauce, place some gnocchi in a frying pan. Add the pesto and most of the beans, along with a little pasta water. Start with 2 tablespoons of the water, and add more as needed to keep the sauce from getting too gummy. Toss in a couple of tablespoons of parmesan.
Cook and toss the mixture together in the pan until all is warm. Serve with more parmesan. Use the leftover beans as a garnish.
To make the brown-butter sage sauce, cook 1 tablespoon of the butter in a frying pan until it is dark brown and foamy but not burned, stirring constantly. Add the shallot or onion slices. When they become translucent, add the garlic and the sage.
Pop in some gnocchi, and cook for 30 seconds longer. Stir in the remaining butter, along with parmesan and pasta water as needed to create a sauce. Garnish with more sage and parmesan.
Each sauce serves about ¼ of the gnocchi recipe.
Tinky Weisblat is the award-winning author of “The Pudding Hollow Cookbook,” “Pulling Taffy,” and “Love, Laughter, and Rhubarb.” Visit her website, TinkyCooks.com.