Foodies,
I decided to treat myself tonight to an Italian style dinner of whole wheat potato gnocchi in pesto with some garlic brandy poached shrimp to go with it which in fairness was also my preview test for a dish I am making for my first home-cooked tasting menu extravaganza of 2015.
I often preview/test run my own dishes beforehand when I know I’m putting on a feast and it’s a darn good thing I did this time around because I made a serious error as you will see below.
The gnocchi itself was pretty straightforward, I mixed 1 1/2 cups of fresh boiled mashed potato with an equal amount of flour, 1 egg and two pinches of Hawaiian Pink sea salt. I mixed the dough by hand, separated it, rolled it out into long strands, cut them into pieces and rolled them out on a box grater to get the proper shape and texture.
Once this was all done, I set half the gnocchis at a time in a large pot of boiling water so they would have plenty of room to float freely to the top indicating they were done.
To the side, I had a large non-stick frying pan ready on the burner at high with some olive oil inside. As soon as the gnocchi was done, I placed them into the pan for a quick flash fry so that they would have a nice brown crust on both sides.
Nice…curious?
How dense was the gnocchi…I think I use 3/1 tator to flour
Paul
Next up it was time for the garlic shrimp. I diced up some fresh garlic and cooked this at medium heat in the same fry pan with some more olive oil. As soon as it was done, I added my shrimp and some butter and immediately turned the heat down to low. I seasoned them with a dry rub of smoked sea salt, garlic powder, rosemary, sage, oregano and black pepper. Then I added in a generous splash of Brandy de Jerez that was finished in Fino casks.
Essentially, I poached the shrimp in a very shallow pool of garlic butter and olive oil and brandy. Once they were done, I pushed them off to the side and added the gnocchi back to the pan for some quick reheating and then added in my homemade pesto and tossed it all together.
And so everything was done. Nothing left to do but plate the finished dish. Yum.
Well, the good news is that the dish tasted fabulous. It was only upon tasting it, however, that I immediately realized the crucial mistake I had made throughout the entire process. Did you notice what it was. Hint: it goes right back to the very first picture.
I forgot to flatten the gnocchi when I was rolling them out! Sure, I gave them a cool look and texture by rolling them on the box grater but there’s a darn good reason why virtually all pasta is flat surfaced or at least starts out that way (tiny macaroni elbows being the exception): it’s so that there is more surface to boiling water exposure turning the entire noodle into pasta.
By leaving them gnocchi still too roundish, I wound up with cooked potato pasta on the outside and a light bread on the inside. Keep in mind, this was still delicious but the texture was all wrong. Oops. Ah well, I’ll know better for the next time. In the meantime, enjoy the food porn.
The funny thing is, it should have been fairly dense because of the high flour content in my ratio of 1.5 to 1. But since I forgot to flatten the gnocchis as I said above, the insides had basically turned into a light bread and thus were fairly light overall. This was more sheer dumbass blind luck than anything else.
Next time I will both flatten them out as well as increase the potato ratio. I’ll also be doing a ricotta version as well.