little gooey balls of goodness

On the weekend I made gnocchi with my friend/housemate. It's very nice to post something a bit culinary for Recipe Monday, instead of takeout and red wine. They were little gooey balls of goodness. Really, they were.

Ruth's Gnocchi

Boil some potatoes until cooked. The trick is to keep out as much water as you can so you need less flour later on, so don't chop the potatoes into small pieces, and use waxy potatoes like those ones with the purple skin.

When they're cooked, whiz them up to a smooth mash paste. You can add an egg now if you like. We did.

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Then stir in flour until it's doughy. Just a bit sticky, but so you can pick up a blob.

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Now pick up a blob and roll it around to make a little ball of dough. Repeat until you've used up all your dough, or have enough little blobs for your dinner. I recommend watching Flight of The Concord's during this stage. Also good for chatting.

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Try to make them all the same size, not varying wildly like mine. Mine also had cracks and lumps, but I think that gave them character.

Drop into boiling water in small batches. They sink and then, in a few seconds, blop! they rise up and float. Scoop the floating ones out and into a colander.

Add sauce (this one is cream tomato, but I tried them on Sunday just with butter and herbs and that was yummy too), baby spinach leaves and Parmesan cheese.

Pour a glass of wine, make loud 'mmMMMMmmm' noises as you chomp them all up, and leave the flour-covered kitchen for later.