As I don't have enough to do already, I tried to make this recipe for the daring cook challenge. For the very first Daring Cooks' challenge, Lis of La Mia Cucina and Ivonne of Cream Puffs in Venice, chose a recipe from The Zuni Café Cookbook by Judy Rodgers to make Ricotta Gnocchi. I have heard many things regarding these gnocchi, mostly raving about their amazing texture, so I was really looking forward to trying this recipe. I have learned few things today though. First, don't wait until the last possible day as things can go wrong, even to veteran cooks, second, have a plan B.
Since I had some home made ricotta in the fridge, made using the super simple recipe I got here, I forged ahead thinking it would be a piece of cake. The ricotta had already been drained for a while so I didn't think twice about using it. After I added the rest of the ingredients, including nutmeg and lemon zest, I realized in horror that the mixture looked way too wet. Not having time to make more ricotta nor to shop, I decided to try and add some flour to the dough. I tested the resulting, thicker dough, but the gnocchi fell apart! More flour was added, and the end result was....aheam.... pretty bad. I decided to post this anyway as a warning to others, the ricotta needs to be super dry for these gnocchi to work, not just drained, squeezed to death dry.
I will try again because the flavor and the consistency of the first gnocchi, the ones that fell apart, were pretty amazing.
Click here for the recipe, and here to see a video on how to shape the gnocchi.
Buon Appetito!
