One advice : Never attempt gnocchi unless you know your potato LOL

So, I thought I can cook almost anything. Today, I flipped through Jamie Oliver’s cookbook, Cook with Jamie Oliver and found a recipe for gnocchi.  I have read about making gnocchi but never bother to give it a second look.  However, Jamie Oliver makes it look so easy to make gnocchi.

I even bought a potato ricer (that metal apparatus on the left in the above picture) because I saw it has 20% discount.  It is less than RM10 so what the heck.   I know I won’t know how to use the potato riser at any other time.

The recipe by Jamie Oliver for making gnocchi uses 6 potatoes, a handful of semolina flour, one egg and some salt and nutmeg.

I popped the four potatoes into boiling water. Then, 20 minutes later, I only notice that Jamie Oliver said to bake or steam the potato to reduce the water content. Oh oh, so I took the hot potatoes out of the pot of boiling water and popped them into my spanking, new oven. My hubby was heating up the thing as a trial run, so it is convenient to throw the potatoes in their skin into the oven.

But oh my God, the thing was a disaster from there on. My potatoes consisted of two russet potatoes from Washington D.C, USA and two washed Australian potatoes. The Yankees and the Ozzies must be allergic to each other. First, my potatoes were undercooked. So, I couldn’t mash them. My son put the potatoes into the blender with the single egg to mash it for me.

Then, when we added the semolina flour, we found that the dough just won’t get firm. I am supposed to roll them into an oblong shape and cut them. But no matter how much flour I added, the thing is watery. I guess my potatoes were first of all, boiled. Next, it is not totally cooked. After blending, too much starch formed. The washed Australian potatoes are very sweet and maybe, the mashed potatoes are forming syrupy, goey mess.

So, we added more and more flour. Finally, we gave up. My eldest son used his piping bag to pipe out the dough while I furiously use a scissor to cut the dough into a pot of boiling water. The gnocchi turned out tasty. But I won’t ever attempt making gnocchi again.

For the sauce, what I did was to heat some olive oil and garlic on standby on the next stove. When the gnocchi is cooked, it will floats up. Just transfer them over to the olive oil and add some pasta sauce and fresh basil and parmesan cheese. It is really yummy and has that springy bite to it. But nahhh…never attempt gnocchi unless you know that your potatoes won’t turn mush.