Café Huss: Adventures in Pasta Making: Gnocchi

My sister, Debbie, had the big idea to make gnocchi tonight. I'm always up for a cooking challenge, so I said "sure why not, we can do it!" (although, she had doubts all day about it) I found a recipe on a blog called 101CookBooks, How to Make Gnocchi like an Italian Grandmother Recipe. It sounded good and hey, if it was an Italian grandmother's recipe, then it must be good!!

The first step was to boil 2 potatoes for about 45 minutes. Afterwards, we quickly removed them from the water and peeled them. Debbie handled the mashing of the potatoes using a fork (no fancy potato ricer or mill to use). Once mashed, I added 1/4 cup of beaten eggs and 3/4 cup of flour and started to create a dough. After some careful kneading, I divided the dough into 8 balls:

From there, I rolled the balls out into "snakes" before cutting them into small 3/4 inch pieces or as I like to call them "pillows."

Using a fork, we pressed the gnocchi pillows into it using our thumbs to give it a slight curve shape and texture from the fork lines, which allows the gnocchi to grab the sauce you choose to eat it with.

From here, we dropped the gnocchi back into boiling water to cook them.

Being the first time we ever made gnocchi, I think they came out pretty good. I've only tried them once before, so I don't have much experience to base it on. They were soft but strong enough to withstand tossing in the heavy gravy we made. My sister thought the texture was off though...that they were too soft. I'm wondering if we made them too thick, which didn't allow them to cook enough in the middle? In any case, I'm not discouraged at all. Even the bloggers we got the recipe from make it known that gnocchi is not something you get right the first time. It takes experience and a whole lot of patience. Which I completely agree. This adventure took about 2 1/2-3 hours from start to finish. When I try to make gnocchi again, I think I will prep the potatoes the night before, which will help to break up the time needed to prepare this dish.

Here is the tomato based "gravy" that Tara gave us the recipe for:

(Cento crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, chopped onions, garlic, fresh basil, fresh oregano, sugar, salt and pepper)

We enjoyed this with some pot roast my dad made and some green beans my mother had stir fried. It was truly a family affair, although Marily missed out on it all because she had to call in sick :-(

Oh by the way...did I mention that I made a peach cobbler with the peaches I picked up at the farmers market this morning? I used a simple Peach Cobbler recipe on the Food Network's website from Paula Deen.

Sweetening up the peaches for the filling: