le blog de tranny

I was like OMG the Silver Spoon is like tha greatest thing evarrr we have leftover ricotta and spinach from the CSA why don’t I make some gnocchi??!!

So I sauteed up some spinach, wrung out the water…

Chopped it up finely…

Combined it with egg yolks and ricotta…

Formed the mixture into balls and “lightly dusted” them with flour as suggested by the Silver Spoon. Then they were ready to boil!

So that’s all fine. I made some nice photos. Uhm… I don’t know what kind of crack the authors of the Silver Spoon were smoking when they wrote this recipe, but this method did not work for me. The gnocchi dough was, as I feared, way too wet… the gnocchi just fell apart while cooking! I know it’s partially my fault for just eye-balling everything but I should’ve listened to my instincts and known that these balls were too moist, and not in a good way. After the first gnocco I had thrown in the pot as a tester was completely demolished I frantically looked up a spinach and ricotta gnocchi recipe on Epicurious — this recipe. After skimming it I concluded that I needed to add much more flour to the dough. “Lightly dust” my ass!

I ended up just mushing all the “gnocchi” back together and adding so much flour to it and making a mess. It was not well combined. I was super stressed and sweating under my bangs — I even had to enlist Ryan’s help in re-rolling out all the dough and shaping it into balls. We started with very small ones, just to be cautious, but ended up making a few big ones just for fun.

This is what they ended up looking like, fugly little buggers. Did I mention we only had whole wheat flour on hand? Hence the nasty fecal tint.

Tasted alright drenched in butter and parm. Wouldn’t call these gnocchi though. At least I didn’t abandon the mission all together.

My next attempt at the gnocchi challenge (potato this time ’round) was a wee bit more successful. I used Smitten’s method of baking the potatoes then grating them (in lieu of using a potato ricer or food mill). I followed this recipe until about halfway through step 4.

We’re starting to get tomatoes in the CSA! Hurrah!!

It actually looks like dough!



Shaping the dough into balls was much easier this time. With properly floured hands, the dough didn’t stick to them too much. It was tempting to keep adding flour to the dough and I eventually had to convince myself that there was enough flour in the dough and to stop. (I may have added nearly a cup.)

Unfortunately we still only had whole wheat dough on hand, which made the gnocchi taste not as good as they could have in my opinion. But the texture was pretty spot on, and smothered in a squash-tomato sauce with fresh basil and parm it was well-liked by all (especially those who had drunkenly stumbled off the street).