Don'tcha "GNO" cchi....

Edwin and I accomplished something great today. We got the foam in my latte to be in the shape of a heart!!!!!!! Just kidding, that happened on accident. We made gnocchi, which is a potato dumpling from Italy. As Edwin mentioned in his post earlier today, we had amazing gnocchi last weekend in D.C. and decided to try our own. Instead of writing out the whole recipe, we made a photo montage of the steps we took. This was quite the elaborate process and probably took us 3 hours from start to clean up. Clean-up involved picking up an entire tray of uncooked gnocchi from the floor after I knocked it off the counter. We are pretty impressed with our results.

We started our day with nourishment. Edwin bought a griddle yesterday, and it has significantly improved our quality of life/breakfast. AMAZING! Previously we made pancakes in a saute pan, one at a time. Needless to say, the first pancake was cold by the time we finished making the last one. Not ideal.

We started the gnocchi making process by putting 4 boiled potatoes through a potato ricer. Yesterday we had no idea what a potato ricer was. Today we are the proud owners of one ($8 at Bed Bath & Beyond). Edwin made the connection that this may be how to make hashbrowns- so that may be our next adventure!

After adding beaten eggs and flour to our potato mixture, we kneaded the dough and rolled it into ropes/snakes. (A new haircut is not necessary to make good gnocchi, although it can't hurt)

After making the snakes out of dough, we cut the gnocchi into small pieces and gave them texture by indenting our thumb in one side while imprinting it with a fork on the other. We had 3 trays of this stuff!

Time to cook the little buggers! We put 20 at a time into a pot of boiling water. They rose to the top when done, after about 2 minutes.

After cooking the gnocchi, we added them to a skillet with cremini and portabello mushrooms. The last step was combining the gnocchi and mushrooms with the delicious cream sauce Edwin made. The cream sauce was made with a base of heavy cream (this recipe did NOT come from Cooking Light!!) and vegetable broth. He added 4 oz. gorgonzola cheese to the cream base and a touch of cayenne pepper.

The results were delicious!!! We would like to try this again sometime soon. We also were happy with the realization that this is a very cheap dish to make. All you need for the gnocchi are a few potatoes, flour and egg. There are all kinds of sauces you can add to the gnocchi, so we have a world of possibilities ahead of us!!!

We really enjoyed ourselves and think the Italians are onto something with these putsy dishes (risotto, gnocchi...). Making great food with someone you love on a Sunday afternoon is pretty awesome!!!

P.S. Here are the links to the recipes/tips we used!

http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/how-to-make-gnocchi-like-an-italian-grandmother-recipe.html

http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/gnocchi-with-mushrooms-and-gorgonzola-sauce