Gnocchi adventures

Gnocchi, I believe is the ultimate in Italian pasta's. Flavourful and light, requiring patience to make and simplicity in presentation are its hallmarks.
I make it a point to ask the waiter at an Italian restaurant whether they serve it and if yes, I close the menu and ask for it. I've had some great gnocchi at the F&B restaurant, spoken to the chef and tried to replicate it many a time.

My attempts thus far have resulted in tough, rubbery bits of potato and flour. This time, I decided to go easy on the flour to test the other side of the recipe. Heidi Swanson in her blog talks about her method of making gnocchi. Thats what I based my recipe on this time, minus the egg and russel potato's - I dont believe the chefs in Bangalore bother much about the type of tuber they use.

With the wife busy with glasswork, cooking for lunch on Saturday fell on me.

Step1. Boiling the potatos. Thanks to that ubiquitous kitchen gadget - the pressure cooker, this got done in under 10mts. Added some sweet potato as well to the mix.
Once done, skinned and mashed the potato's with a fork to get it all together. The recipe calls for seasoning with salt at this stage, once the mash has cooled. In hindsight, I believe this most probably resulted in the mass getting gooey with all the water being expelled from the tuber.

Started off bringing the dough together by sprinkling dough over the lump of potato and gently kneading the mix with a fork. I must have used about half a cup of flour for 2 standard sized potato's

Once done, I cooked these in boiling water. Was pleasantly surprised to see them bob up to the surface in a few minutes. Of course, its not magic - they were cooked and done at the time and so the rising.

The accompaniments to this were a simple zucchini and cherry tomato combination with a cream and blue cheese sauce, which eventually turned out to be over the top. Notes to self - cut down on creamy sauces and use pesto or tomato based sauces instead, there's more you can innovate with those.

Verdict - ok for a genuine first attempt. As is evident from the photographs, the gnocchi came out gooey. I'm ok with that since I've now straddled the boundaries of flour addition quite well. The next attempt should be better.