Homemade gnocchi

I've always wanted to try making gnocchi. Those little delightful potato dumplings look so simple. I've seen them made on tv on several occasions, and I decided the other day to try my hand. It wasn't a resounding success, but I feel like I have something to build on.

Making gnocchi:

I consulted a few different recipes, with varied but simple instructions. Start with:

some potatoes
an egg
some flour (between a cup and 2 cups)
some salt and pepper

I was advised to boil, steam or bake the potatoes, usually accompanied by cautions against the other methods. Some recipes counted the potatoes, others weighed them. Quick question for you, internet chefs: How much is 3 potatoes? How big are these potatoes? A little frustrating, until I realized that I couldn't weigh them anyway, so I was going to have to wing it regardless of the recipe.

I used four medium-sized russet potatoes. The flesh is dry and powdery, excellent to use as flour.

I decided to steam the potatoes, as they wouldn't get as wet and therefore would require less flour. After steaming, I let the potatoes cool, then peeled, chopped and mashed them. I should have let them cool completely, but we were hungry.

I also should have mashed them more, but I'm not sure it made a difference. All the recipes called for the cooked and peeled potatoes to be forced through a potato ricer (how's that for a ridiculous tool?) or vegetable mill. Since I have neither (nor do I know what either are), I simply mashed them up. Les voila.

Add the egg, some salt and pepper, and mix. Then start adding the flour.

I started with one cup of flour, but might have ended up using about two. I was warned off using too much flour (making the gnocchi heavier), so I resisted adding very much. I shouldn't have, it turns out.

I rolled out some dough, cut the tube into pieces, and soon discovered that my dough wasn't dense enough to do anything with. I couldn't press it into a fork to make the traditional gnocchi shape, because it was so soft and just flattened. I think it should be more like biscuit dough than bread dough, maybe.

Cooking gnocchi:

Our first batch went into boiling water, and they quickly floated up, so we took them out as directed, but we should have left them in longer. Flour can't cook in a minute, so we were left eating uncooked balls of dough (with a quick tomato sauce).*

Our next batch we left in longer, and the difference was substantial. They probably cooked for about five minutes, much of that already floating. As above, I think my dough was too light and therefore floated too soon and then wasn't cooked.

* Mario Batali's recipe calls for only a minute... hmmm...

Homemade vanilla extract

The gorgeous vanilla caviar.

This will be short, as it's just a copy of these instructions at Vanilla Review. It felt pretty cool to make homemade vanilla, it took only a short time and wasn't at all expensive.

Vanilla beans in stores can be $5 each, so you would need a small fortune if you wanted to make some serious extract working with what's available in your local store. After reading a few tips, I looked at the offerings on eBay and found something that looked decent: 30 organic beans for $23 Cdn. And when they arrived there was a bonus pack of 10 more. I chose grade A, but apparently grade B provide more flavour by weight, so if you're buying by the pound go for that option.

Slice beans lengthwise, and scrape out the inner "caviar". Stick caviar and bean husk in alcohol, shake like a hot-damn, let sit for several weeks, and you're good to go. Use 6-8 beans per cup of alcohol. I used vodka, as it's a more neutral alcohol, but it might be fun to try other flavoured alcohols. On the advice of the instructions I chopped the bean husks up, to allow for better flavour extraction. Done and done.

Ceramic cutting board (our wooden ones would have absorbed so much vanilla flavour, I thought), knife, bottle, vodka, beans.


You can't really see, but the vanilla stuff is just under halfway to the top of the alcohol.

Home-made sushi: Attempt #1

As a lovely housewarming gift, Nina and I were given a sushi kit. Bowls, plates, chopsticks, chopstick holders, bamboo mats, the whole bit. We decided to use them as soon as possible, and after a quick shop at our local Korean grocery store we had most of what we needed.

We had decided earlier that it was going to be only vegetarian: Fresh fish is difficult to find in our neighbourhood. We got right into the chopping, of mangoes, portabellos, green onions, red peppers, cucumber and asparagus. I checked out some sushi tips online, and started the rice and miso.

The rice ended up pretty bland. I needed to cook it with a bit of salt, perhaps, and the ratio I read for the vinegar was off (couldn't taste any difference). The texture was fine, I think, and it was properly sticky without being mushy.

Rolling out the maki was a tad difficult, shall we say. We didn't know how thick the rice should be, and my first (and only attempt) ended up as a thick log, not really even edible. Nina and her sister Emily took over, and we ended up with some fine rolls.

Unfortunately our soy sauce was dark, a little overpowering, and the wasabi was cheap and hot than flavourful.

So, the lessons:

1) More vinegar, salt and sugar in the rice.
2) Lighter soy sauce.
3) Better wasabi.
4) Thin rice.

We're going to try again, and soon I hope. I'm looking forward to trying fish, and trying the inside-out rolls with sesame on the rice.