Ha, guess what folks, I've been living in a horrible horrible LIE all these years! How dare they lie to me! How dare they!
Hm, well not exactly. You see, it goes like this. I've never made the regular potato gnocchi myself, not given it as much as a thought, because all this time everything I've heard about making them is how so very hard they are to make and how it takes ages to make them and it's nearly impossible to get them right and all this. Then, one beautiful morning a couple of weeks ago, when we had just woken up, my toaster oven and me (he he, just kidding) and were leafing through cook books and there it was, right in the middle of my old vegetarian cook book. Sweet potato gnocchi recipe. Which are basically the same as potato gnocchi. I read through it and thought to myself "what is this now, these are so easy to make and no-one's ever told me about it?"
The only gnocchi I've ever made, are these ricotta gnocchi, which are heavenly (and which Vilina makes so much better than me - but I'm learning!). But compared to those, this sweet potato gnocchi was much easier, quicker and didn't cause such a huge chaos in my kitchen.
Okay, I must admit those ricotta gnocchi are still my favourite of these two. But compared to my expectations about making regular gnocchi, these were simple and straight forward. And especially delicious fried after boiling them.
So, today's lesson, kids: Don't be afraid of making your own gnocchi. It's not as hard as you think. Although you most probably end up with a bigger mess than you thought. So, if you're not a fan of cleaning your kitchen, Then you might want to think twice, my dear.
..Hehehee, look how much they resemble dried apricots. :D
Oh, the recipe? You just take a sweet potato, medium size, boil the hell out of it, peel it and mush it in a bowl. Add salt and pepper, one egg and hmm, say, 2 cups of flour. Mess all up with a fork, but just until combined, otherwise the dough gets though. At this stage, you most probably want to add flour. You can test it like this: stick your finger in the dough, if you lost your finger to the dough and all you get back is a sticky mess when you try to pull it out, you want more flour. You should be able to form little balls out of these that you can handle.
Then take little sections out of the dought, form them to balls and press them a little with a fork (see picture above). They should be about, hmm, one inch. Then, when you have about thirty or twenty or something little things in front of you and you still haven't drowned in all the flour and mess, you can put a large sauce pan half full of water with some salt to a boil. When boiling, put half of the little gnocchi in, and wait for some 4 minutes until they start to float and then fish them out. Repeat with the other batch. Fry if desired, otherwise serve with some sauce or pesto. Red pesto is particularly nice, if you ask me.
..In fact, I suggest you find a proper recipe for this somewhere. You might end up with even a bigger mess than me if you try making these with my recipe here.
Hm, in fact I'm feeling rather good at the moment. Was about time after that horrible beginning of a week. Maybe things will be alright, after all. Most probably they will.
