Holy Crap, I Cooked!

Yes, I actually cooked something. From scratch. And here is the photographic evidence for homemade, from-scratch, ricotta gnocchi. Because it turns out that ricotta gnocchi is a whole lot easier to make than potato gnocchi. And by a whole lot easier, I mean Holy crap, that was easy!


So first you mix most of the ingredients together in a bowl. Here's what you need:

• 1 15 oz thing of Ricotta cheese
• It should be noted that ricotta is, in fact, a dairy product. And it makes up the majority of this dish. If you're lactose intolerant, like me, make sure you take a lactaid pill before consuming the gnocchi.
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 10 grinds of pepper (I hope you have a pepper grinder. I don't know how to translate this to teaspoons)

So you mix all of that together and you get this:

Yes, it's very exciting. I know. Technically you're supposed to whisk those ingredients together. But I don't own a whisk. Like I said, I don't cook much.

Anyway, once that's all mixed together, you start adding flour, 1/2 cup at a time, until you get a "soft dough". I'm not entirely sure what a "soft dough" is, so I went with the recommended 3/4 cup of flour, at which ponit it became difficult to stir and looked like this. Note that you are supposed to use a spoon, not a whisk, for this step. Which means that I actually saved on the cleanup part of this experiment.

Once you have your soft dough, put another 1/2 cup of flour on your cutting board and put your dough on top of it. Then knead it, adding flour, until it doesn't stick to your hands anymore. I don't think I added the right amount of flour, it was either too much or too little, but the end product tasted good. My advice is to not worry too much about this step. Knead and add flour until you feel it's right. Make sure to drink wine during this process. It helps with the end result.

Now things get tricky. Slice your blob of dough into six equal parts. (That was the tricky part, especially after all the wine.) Then, roll each section into a snake, just like 1st grade art class with the clay, and cut the snakes into bite-sized pieces.

This is what it looks like when it's been all sliced up. Mmmmm, raw gnocchi

Boil some water (actually, you should start the water boiling back when you start kneading the dough. I hope you read through this whole thing first. If not, don't worry, it's not the end of the world.) Then dump the gnocchi into the water. My pieces actually all stuck together, so I had to pull them apart and toss them in a few at a time. This resulted in a splash of boiling water each time that usually landed on my skin. It hurt. But it was a temporary pain, and the gnocchi made it all worth it, in the end.

Gnocchi floats when it's done cooking! It's nice like that. When all your gnocchi is floating, wait 30 seconds or so and then drain it. That 30 seconds is to make sure it's actually all cooked.

Let's be honest, this is all just a vehicle to get pesto into my belly. You can freeze the cooked gnocchi, but this recipe only makes a few servings, so that seemed kind of silly. I added pesto to all of the gnocchi, because I've found that pasta dishes keep a bit better in the fridge when the sauce is already mixed in. So I'll eat some tonight and refrigerate the rest for tomorrow. Hopefully it works out

Here's a tip: don't dump the freshly cooked gnocchi into a metal bowl. Metal transfers heat really well. Also, that's not the same metal bowl as the earlier pictures. It's a much smaller metal bowl.

Start to finish, this all took me about half an hour. It might go faster if you actually know how to knead dough. Or it might go slower, if I didn't knead it for long enough. Who knows?