I made these colorful little carrot gnocchi/dumplings the other day from one of Marcella Hazan’s books (that I got on remainder, which might have been an omen right there):

They look rather serene on their little bed of pesto, except when I tasted them… bleh. Too soft, bland, and almost gluey, even though I poached them until they were as firm as possible. I’m not quite sure what could have gone wrong; this was my first experience with homemade gnocchi, but I followed the recipe very carefully. As you can see, they also ended up being a little bloated, but only because smaller attempts fell apart completely in the poaching liquid.

The recipe is not much like traditional potato gnocchi or even ricotta gnocchi in that it has a very tiny amount of flour - a measly 3 tablespoons - for holding together the pureed carrots and egg yolk. Instead of rolling them into logs and slicing or trying to fashion shapes by hand, they must be spooned out and dropped into the water (which also accounts for the slightly irregular shapes). Marcella does say they are supposed to be tender, but these were flaccid to the point of mush. Usually Marcella’s pasta recipes are reasonably detailed and have very good results, and this one in particular was pretty straightforward. So what gives?

Well, I’m vowing to not let this experience make me gnocchi-shy. I might try a different recipe in the next few days… so if anyone has a gnocchi recipe they love, feel free to leave it in the comments or email it to me!

Posted by the cookworm on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 11:57 am.