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So I mentioned over on the Local Dish Twitter feed that I was doing something very brave, very daring yesterday afternoon for dinner. (I say afternoon because I had to start so very early for it to be ready for dinner.) It took more than three hours of inactive and active time, but I was determined that I was going to make:
Butternut Squash Gnocchi with Sage Brown Butter
It was ambitious, certainly. Perhaps a little mad. (Mwaahaaha!) And in the end, a bit of a… catastrophe.
OK, OK, it was an edible catastrophe and actually quite photogenic. But I say catastrophe because it was stressful, frustrating, messy, mixed up and utterly like not it should be.
But let me explain. The mistake begins right here in the first picture, where I show the pureed butternut, boiled and riced (meaning mashed using a ricer) potatoes, spices and an egg.
But you know what wasn’t in there? The cheese. About 3/4 cup of very finely grated Parmesan cheese that I chopped in the food processor. Which I then had to hand wash, which I do not relish. I had the cheese in the fridge, but I did not remember that at the time, so wrapped up was I in the new and interesting if time consuming process of making gnocchi, one of my favorite things to order when we go out to Italian restaurants.
The dough is sticky, so you need to, No. 1, use a floured surface, hands and utensils at all times. No. 2, you also need to keep whatever pieces of dough you’re not working on at that moment in the fridge, because the chill makes it easier to handle. First, roll each section out into a little worm, just like back in preschool.
Except now as an adult, you get to wield a big, fun chef’s knife to cut the worm into about inch-long pieces. At this point, I still think I’m doing well. “Look at me! I’m making gnocchi!” I think, envisioning more evenings of such meals since I’m obviously so talented and all. Penne and tomato vodka sauce next? I was mentally salivating.
And mentally patting myself on the back. Look at the pretty gnocchi, which have been rolled over with the tines of a fork. Once shaped, they go back in the fridge for at least one hour before being boiled, again because it makes them less sticky and easier to handle.
I had to make two trays to fit all the dough. One slid into the fridge easily, but I had to move around some other stuff ont he shelves to make room for the second, including a… what is that? Oh, 3/4 cup of finely grated Parmesan cheese. Right. Great. At that point, I gave myself a palm-shaped flour-outlined hand print on my forehead. Yay!
And then I got over myself and decided that I had bought all the ingredients, I had done all that work and I had even taken photos along the way to show all of you. I had to figure out something. The main problem was going to be that as the recipe and its original sauce stood, dinner was going to be starchy gnocchi sauteed in butter with some sage. Not cool. There’s no flavor there without the cheese, just greasy chunks of potato/squash. Luckily, I have grown kitchen confidence over the last couple years and improvised, hacking together a substitute, something that would combine the dish’s original flavors of Parmesan and sage but on the outside of the gnocchi instead of in:
Sage and Parmesan Cream Sauce (which I based on an Epicurious recipe I found on my iPhone while panicking in the kitchen)
And after the panicking and the frustration and the steam out the ears and self recrimination and palms-to-forehead, you know, it didn’t turn out half bad.
The cheese sauce balanced the starchier-than-planned gnocchi well, and was in fact quite yummy, if a little creamily decadent. The gnocchi cooked well, without falling apart and staying tender. I didn’t taste as much butternut as I would have liked, but I altered our version of the recipe here to adjust for that. Because it was rich, we had small portions, but it was actually very tasty.
Was it worth the time and frustration? NO. Sorry, but NO. But on the up side, hey, I know now how to make gnocchi.
Gnocchi with Tomato Vodka Sauce: Here I come!
