Gnocchi!

For a few months now, I've wanted to try my hand at making gnocchi after enjoying a particularly spectacular gnocchi dish from Maggiano's in Durham. I brought down my Italian Vegetarian cookbook and found a simple potato gnocchi recipe. The main reason I didn't try to make this dish earlier is because I did not own a potato ricer -- one of the most important devices for making gnocchi [apparently]! That is, until I broke down and bought one off of Amazon.com because I simply had to make these.

The recipe I used was pretty basic, a couple pounds of baked, riced potatoes with enough flour to make the dough not sticky plus a teaspoon of salt. I took a shortcut and baked the potatoes in the microwave, which seemed to work fine. After they were baked, I peeled them [with oven mits, those things were hot] and riced them into a bowl. In the first picture, you can see the potato ricer and the carnage of potato peelings left in my sink.

Once in the bowl, I let them cool and then added the flour and salt. Following the recipe, I mixed it all together by hand until it was incorporated but not overworked. Working with this dough was interesting because the dough has a unique texture: soft and silky but almost stiff as well.

Next the fun part! Rolled out the dough into long "ropes" on the counter and then cut them into 3/4" pieces. One of the most unique things about gnocchi in my opinion is the shape of the pieces. Ridges on one side, but a smooth indent on the other. The Italian Vegetarian cookbook (which is an amazing cookbook, by the way) told me to use a fork and use my index finger to put the indent into the back. So what I ended up doing was to use the back of the fork and place each piece, one by one, onto the fork and press their backs -- pushing them into the fork, to give the ridges, and leaving the indent from my finger. I guess that was the point!

Next step was to plop them into boiling water and wait until they started floating. I had to try one at this point, even sans-sauce, and it was the kind of melt-in-your mouth texture that I was hoping for! I used a slotted spoon to fish them out of the water and mixed them with some pre-made pesto sauce. Unfortunately I didn't have any fresh pesto -- but I'm working on it! More on that some other time.

Served them with some peas, and they were delicious. My roommates (and I of course) loved it!

An experiment well done, with delicious, tasty results.

To start

The semester is over and I am now a junior in college. A brief thought entered my mind a little while ago: I've now spent a longer time outside of NCSSM than I did in. Science and Math was a place I thought I would remember vividly forever, but here it is only two years afterward, and the effect has faded substantially. There I grew as a person, I found myself and began listening to my own "voice". Most of my memories from that school were, however, simply of people -- people from whom I've drifted. My memories of those people are fading and now NCSSM seems more like a vague attachment than a true connection. Maybe in the future, if I somehow attribute anything I do to my attendance at that school, I will remember it differently.

Today I feel was an important day. Ever since I was young I've always seemed to have a problem with picking up hobbies and interests, little projects here and there, but never completing them. The closest hobby I had ever really come close to, in my mind at least, completing was playing violin. Now, though, I see that I'm not progressing even in that interest. But today, today is the day I completed one of my projects! This is the first time which I've completed something from conception, to design, to purchasing of materials, to the assembly.

I decided a few months ago that I needed to create a hanging light structure to house my 105-watt CFL bulb illuminating my hydroponics system. My father helped me get only a few parts [electrical, mainly] since I had very little idea of how the structure would be built. After a couple of weeks of not working on it, I cast it aside as another one of "those projects" that never get finished. That was until a few days ago when my friend, Leah, suggested we do something and building that light structure popped into my head -- I went with it! I sat down and drew out some plans, figured out the materials I would need, and bought them. A bit of labor later and I've got a new hanging light structure to use with whatever plants I decide to grow next in my hydroponics system.