Making Yucky

Brought about by either having withdrawal from my kitchen (with no canning projects to speak of), or by the ridiculous sale on potatoes at the local market (5 lbs for .99--how can you beat that?), I decided today to make gnocchi.

I have never done this before. I know I like it, I have seen it done, but I've never done it. When I looked for a recipe, it seemed like a piece of cake. A nice, pretty quick way to make a bunch of gnocchi all at once, and I could freeze it and we could have it whenever we would like. Because it seemed so easy to do, I figured why not do it big? So I boiled up 9 pounds of potatoes. The recipe needed 3 at a clip, and I figured I'd pretty much make triple that and have a WHOLE LOT. Good deal.

The cooking of the potatoes was a piece of cake. Boil them, no big deal. Peel them, no big deal. Smush them, no big deal. I smushed them as best I could, then I threw them in the mixer to smush them further. Then I added the egg, the salt, and the flour. Then I mixed them but good and went to knead it.

This is where I had trouble. This stuff is STICKY!! No sooner would the outside get dry, then the inside would be a sticky, mushy mess. I was struggling with this, adding flour and kneading and kneading, when Little Boy came over.

"What're you doing, mommy-o?" he said. (We are beatnik parents, I have to warn you now. Mommy-o and Daddy-o. Funny enough, it was Little Boy who started to call us that when he turned 2--I don't know why-and it just stuck. So that's us. The beatniks.)

"I am making gnocchi", I said as I added MORE flour.

"Making Yucky?"

"No, making GNOCCHI."

"Why are you making Yucky?"

"Nee-yo-kee", I said, sounding it out as best I could for him. "I am making it because it's good."

"Why is Yoke-y good?"

"Because it is" (aren't I full of helpful information?)

"Why? Is it bread?"

"It's not bread, it's like macaroni. You can have some if you want."

"Ummmmm...no thanks. It's not macaroni!"

"Why isn't it macaroni?"

"Cause that's dough, and macaroni's not dough! It's hard and it grows on trees!"

Ok, that's my husband's fault. We were in the car one day and he kept asking and asking where things came from Most of what he asked about grew on trees or bushes. He asked where oranges came from, where lemons came from, where pears came from, etc. Just on and on and on. He finally asked where macaroni came from, and my husband, who is as demented as I am, says "a macaroni bush". Well, to a 4 year old a bush=a tree, so macaroni grows on trees. I am partly to blame for this. When my husband said it, my son got so excited about macaroni growing on trees (and therefore maybe he could plant one), that I just couldn't stop laughing enough to correct the situation.

So this was my chance for redemption.

"No, macaroni is made from dough. Then it's dried. That's why it's hard. It doesn't grow on trees" I said.

He looked pretty disappointed, but didn't push the issue.

"So that's yucky macaroni?"

"Yes", I said, because now it was kind of a yucky thing. I could NOT get it to dry up and be workable. I think that at this point I had added 3cups of flour, and I know the recipe only called for 2. Most recipes called for less than that, so man, I was off. I decided to just cut my losses and roll it out the way I was supposed to, boil it up, and hope for the best.

At this point, Little Boy had moved on, convinced that the yucky macaroni was just another project of mine, and he needn't worry because I wasn't feeding it to him tonight, and all was right with the world.

I did get the dough to sort of behave, and got it rolled out and cut up, but the gnocchi are not pretty. The second batch I made behaved slightly better, but still was really sticky, and not pretty at all. I did taste them after they came out of the water, and they taste fine, but they're not as coherent as I would have liked. They're also not so smooth, despite the fact that I beat the potatoes to a pulp.

And I shall call them "Rustic"

So I don't know what I'm missing here. They are passable, but ugly. I think they could be better. I did make two batches, but I froze the last three pounds of cooked potatoes instead of using them because I was a bit discouraged, and didn't want to make 3 batches of ugly gnocchi. Are there any gnocchi makers out there? Got any tips to help me change my "yucky macaroni" into pretty delicious macaroni? I'd be glad for the help!