Hi everyone,
Well week 7 almost brought about a disaster in my attempt to make Gnocchi di Ricotta e Spinaci, or Ricotta and Spinach Gnocchi. To kick us off this week I have to point out that this is not an overly attractive dish to cook! However, I thought it would be tasty and was keen to give it a go.
So to start off I had to cook 1kg of spinach, which was an interesting task! I actually had to cook it in 4 batches as I couldn’t fit it all into the pot! Once the spinach was all cooked I had to drain all the excess water out of it, which appears to be quite a skill. I tried pushing it into a sieve, and whilst this worked, I still thought the spinach was quite wet. I then chopped it up finely and mixed it in a bowl with ricotta, parmesan, two egg yolks and seasoned it with some S&P. The mixture was then shaped into balls and set aside for cooking. The mixture was really quite wet, and was only just holding together. The recipe suggested that you dust the gnocchi lightly with flour, although this was absorbed quite quickly.
Next step was to cook the gnocchi in batches of 4 or 5 pieces at a time in some boiling water. At this point I could tell that the gnocchi was not going to hold together, but thought I should try it and see what happened. As I suspected, once placed in the water the gnocchi totally disintegrated and turned the water into a dodgy spinach and ricotta soup. Not so tasty…
So plan B was put into action pretty quickly, after some consideration was given to invoking the pizza clause. As the gnocchi was simply not holding together, I rolled each piece in flour and coated it thoroughly. I tested a couple of these pieces in the boiling water, and they held together perfectly. So I cooked up the rest using this process and got the dish back on track… crisis averted!
Well week 7 almost brought about a disaster in my attempt to make Gnocchi di Ricotta e Spinaci, or Ricotta and Spinach Gnocchi. To kick us off this week I have to point out that this is not an overly attractive dish to cook! However, I thought it would be tasty and was keen to give it a go.
So to start off I had to cook 1kg of spinach, which was an interesting task! I actually had to cook it in 4 batches as I couldn’t fit it all into the pot! Once the spinach was all cooked I had to drain all the excess water out of it, which appears to be quite a skill. I tried pushing it into a sieve, and whilst this worked, I still thought the spinach was quite wet. I then chopped it up finely and mixed it in a bowl with ricotta, parmesan, two egg yolks and seasoned it with some S&P. The mixture was then shaped into balls and set aside for cooking. The mixture was really quite wet, and was only just holding together. The recipe suggested that you dust the gnocchi lightly with flour, although this was absorbed quite quickly.
Next step was to cook the gnocchi in batches of 4 or 5 pieces at a time in some boiling water. At this point I could tell that the gnocchi was not going to hold together, but thought I should try it and see what happened. As I suspected, once placed in the water the gnocchi totally disintegrated and turned the water into a dodgy spinach and ricotta soup. Not so tasty…
So plan B was put into action pretty quickly, after some consideration was given to invoking the pizza clause. As the gnocchi was simply not holding together, I rolled each piece in flour and coated it thoroughly. I tested a couple of these pieces in the boiling water, and they held together perfectly. So I cooked up the rest using this process and got the dish back on track… crisis averted!
Once all the pieces were cooked I plated them up, sprinkled them with some fresh parmesan, and used melted butter as the sauce. I was actually quite impressed with the taste in the end. I think this dish would be best served as an entrée, with just 4 or 5 pieces of gnocchi per serve. I would also make the size of each piece a bit smaller, as they ended up quite large once all the flour was added towards the end of the process.
However, all in all, this was a tasty dish, and pretty simple to make. I’d be happy to have this one again.
Until next time…
S.
However, all in all, this was a tasty dish, and pretty simple to make. I’d be happy to have this one again.
Until next time…
S.
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