My ideal Sunday afternoon is spent in the kitchen humming to my favourite playlist and puttering away with mastering a dish that takes more time and attention than a weekday dinner affords.
Gnocchi is a crowd-pleaser in our home. We usually source a reasonable premade gnocchi from the grocer. It is quick, easy, and makes for a decent dinner in record time. A little brown butter, a handful of frozen peas, and a sprinkling of grated parmesan cheese are all you need to make it sing. A salad on the side completes the meal. Minimal clean-up is a bonus win.
I’ve been working on Gnocchi for years. I find Sundays the perfect day to practice transforming the tiny pillows into gently grooved pillows that aren’t entirely contorted and rendered dense and rubbery from over-working. The instructional recipes and videos make it sound faultlessly easy - it is not. Gnocchi takes practice, patience, and a delicate hand. I’m getting better at winning.
I remember the very first time I made Gnocchi from scratch. I’d never even heard of it before, but I watched Chef Pasquale Carpino on tv turn potatoes into ravable pillows of joy and thought -"How hard can that be?" - I was a young newlywed, and nothing seemed daunting to me.
I was fortunate to grow up preparing meals for my family as a young adolescent. At 12 years old, cooking was how I helped the house run smoothly. I could come home after school and have dinner ready before my mother got home from work. Complaints were never lodged against anything I made, and the experimenting was good for my willingness to risk failure in the kitchen.
Mistakes teach us things we never forget.
I stand by this, but the only thing my first attempt at Gnocchi taught me was not to try it again.
I failed Gnocchi so hard that first time and presented dense and tasteless inedible clods of rubbery dough more reminiscent of rocks than pillows. I used so much flour that the sauce turned into a starchy paste - a complete disaster. Fortunately, my offering was not the main dish, just something I had whipped up as an exotic try - nobody starved.
It was years before I tried my hand again. Google, YouTube, and how-to videos have been a culinary game-changer for determined experimenters like me. Since trying my hand again, with more experience, increased knowledge, and understanding, I've successfully crafted some decent renditions of Gnocchi. My recipe and technique are nowhere near perfect, but the results are improving steadily.
Today I used a gnocchi board Mike picked up for a song during our travels around Rome. It was a joy to use, and I felt like it upped my gnocchi game just a little. My tiny pillows were more presentable than any time before.
For now, the trial gets logged in the Gnocchi attempts diary. A notation for today will be to increase the flour ever so slightly, to firm up the texture just a little bit. Tasters around the table today were looking for a little more resistance to the bite.
I love that still, no one complains about my experimentation.
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