gnocchi with pan fried radishes and turnip tops

gnocchi with radishes

So remember when Nathan and I made Jody Adam's disastrous gnocchi in cream sauce? Well, even if you don't, I've had nightmares enough for the both of us. They were soggy, leaden, doughy lumps that sat in our stomachs like cannon balls. An undisputed utter failure.

Well, believe it or not, we had uncooked gnocchi leftover which I actually froze and saved, and I was recently brave enough to defrost them and try again. Nathan told me to just throw them away and not suffer through the awfulness yet again, but I hate to waste food, and I suspected they might be slightly better if I were to pan fry them to a crisp golden brown. (This smitten kitchen posts assures us that after pan frying we will never boil again.)

The verdict? Browning made all the difference! They still weren't super amazing or great, but they were actually quite palatable, and much lighter than the cream laden ones we had cooked the first time around. I'm sure I could improve with practice, but I think the first batch went so badly wrong because we used too much cream and didn't reduce it enough, not because of any fatal flaws in the gnocchi itself. Somewhat of a comfort.

Of course, I had to go and overload the cast iron skillet by about 5 or 6 gnocchi, making it nearly impossible to flip the little dudes without smushing them together. Typical move on my part. Luckily, I still got them all to brown, and if a couple of them joined together to form conjoined twin super gnocchi, it had very little impact on the final flavor.

As for the gnocchi accompaniments, I was inspired by my surplus of radishes and starting-to-yellow turnip tops. I happened across a New York Times article and recipe that sang the praises of cooked radishes, and I was immediately all about it. You can only slice so many of those things and throw them in salads.

I quartered my (surprisingly large) radishes and set them face down in a hot oil pan and just let them brown for about three minutes. After they started to color, I added some finely chopped garlic and stirred it all around for a bit. Then I added the chopped green tops of two bunches of turnips, mixing them around until they all began to wilt. After the tops were cooked through, I added the golden brown gnocchi back into the pan and sprinkled with shredded parmesan. It was all actually pretty good. Cooked radishes are damn tasty, and when it comes to gnocchi, pan frying is definitely an appealing option.


homemade gnocchi: better pan fried

master meals, week 4: jody adams' gnocchi with mushroom fricassee

I have not been looking forward to writing this entry. Jody Adams may have broken our losing streak by becoming the first featured Master Meals chef to make it to the Champions round, but Nathan and I were less successful back in his kitchen. This was easily the worst thing we've cooked all year, including our blue cheese sauce disaster.

The recipe was for homemade gnocchi with mushroom fricassee, and it looked straightforward enough. Sure, I'd heard that making gnocchi can be pretty tricky, but I had done my research and I thought I had a pretty solid grasp of the process.


our gnocchi

Unfortunately, a theoretical understanding of making gnocchi will only take you so far, and we fell more than a little short in the execution. Instead of light, fluffy potato-y pillows, our gnocchi were dense, doughy bricks. It was quite a disappointment. I think that making good gnocchi is probably one of those things that you have to just develop over time, because I couldn't tell you what went wrong. My only thoughts are that I may have over kneaded the dough, and that it would have been lighter had I added more flour. The Jody Adams recipe used about twice as much potato as compared to flour than the other two recipes I was using as a reference.

Anyway, I won't pretend to give you any gnocchi tips, as I could use some good ones myself. I will, however, tell you a bit more about the mushroom fricassee, which was quite delicious and was the only reason I was able to stomach as much of the gnocchi as I did. We sliced and browned a whole pound of button and portabello mushrooms in some butter. We had to do this in two batches so as to not crowd the mushrooms, (a Julia Child tip). Then we removed them from the pan and sauteed up a shallot and a clove of garlic with more butter until soft. Then we tossed the mushrooms back in with a half a cup of marsala wine and let that reduce to a nice glaze. The recipe also called for fresh thyme, but we did without.

On its own, this mushroom fricassee would have been great. Adams poured reduced heavy cream over her gnocchi and spread the mushrooms, chopped tomatoes and parmesan cheese on top to bake. We used canned chopped tomatoes, which actually worked fine-- it was the gnocchi that were the real problem. They were just a leaden mess, and soaking in all the cream probably didn't help any either. Sprinkled with parsley, though, they actually looked pretty good. As we sadly learned, however, appearances can be deceiving.


not bad looking gnocchi