Ambition, 2.1

One of the reasons I got so het up about the idea of making homemade ricotta was I found a recipe for ricotta gnocchi. Said recipe was part of an article about using homemade ricotta and sure, I could have just bought a tub of cheese at the store and called it a day, but I got ambitious.

Ricotta recipe one failed miserably. Ricotta recipe two turned out splendidly, and now that I had the main ingredient, I could turn it into gnocchi. The actual recipe was for ricotta gnocchi with some kind of mushroom sauce (serves six), but I skipped the mushroom part and figured on substituting my own tomato sauce.

Per the instructions, I weighed out a pound of ricotta and dutifully drained it until it had the texture of wet clay. I mixed in a half cup of flour, an egg, a tablespoon each of olive oil and melted butter, a 1/4 c. of Parmesan
and some salt and pepper. It felt very sticky, so I added another tablespoon of flour. After the fourth (do not add more than four! the recipe said) it was still pretty sticky, not slighty sticky, but, do not add more than four tablespoons!

I did pause a moment to consider that this was the same guy who wrote ricotta recipe one, and maybe, just maybe, he was wrong. Then I decided to follow what was written and play around another time, if necessary.

I covered and chilled the dough. A half hour later, I took the dough out again and tried to divide it into four parts, but it was awfully sticky. I ended up with three. Using copious amounts of flour, I rolled the dough into 3/4-inch-wide logs. Here, the recipe said to cut them into 1-inch pieces, but I thought they would look more, well, gnocchi-like if I pinched off pieces instead. They were still remarkably sticky, so I rolled them in flour before placing them on a baking sheet to chill some more.

At this point, I had to turn the operation over to Will while I took Keith to soccer practice. Shortly before we were due home, he put the gnocchi on to cook. They boiled in water for a few minutes, floated to the top, and he cooked them about two minutes longer and drained them. Keith and I weren't home yet, so Will kept the gnocchi warm by tossing them with some melted butter in a saute pan over low heat. When we finally got home, he served the gnocchi with tomato sauce.

THE VERDICT: Reaction one -- Serves six? I don't think so. We didn't have enough for four servings, with two of them kid-sized. Granted, I didn't do the mushroom sauce business, which might have had something to do with it, but we still should have had enough for four bowls.
Reaction two -- WOW. Wow, wow, wow. These were really good. The gnocchi were extremely light, with a nice texture and flavor. They also went well with the homemade tomato sauce. So next time, I double the recipe.