Gnocchi Days

I cooked my first gnocchi last night - from scratch that is. Overall I was satisfied with the effort but obviously will spend the rest of my life working to perfect the recipe.

Actually that is one of my problems, I found many different recipes for gnocchi so I kinda made this one up as I went along. I used: 1 kg of organic Sebago potatoes which I boiled with their skins on and peeled afterwards (that seems to be a very popular instruction). I mashed them and added an egg, a handful or so of plain flour, and about 1 C ricotta cheese. This was all rolled out and cut into 1" lengths. They only took about a minute to cook in rolling, boiling water.

I placed the cooked gnocchi in a baking dish and covered them with 2 tins of tomatoes that were already mixed with garlic and oregano. This was baked at about 150 C. I put shredded cheese over the top once it had all heated through, turned up the heat and cooked until the cheese was golden.

So now I get to things I would change about the actual gnocchi (the sauces will always be interchangeable). I didn't have a ricer so I just mashed the potato. It needed to be finer - yes I think I should have used a ricer. The ricotta did make it a lighter mix but I think I could have used more of the ricotta. Not all of the recipes I looked at included an egg, in fact there was about a 50/50 split about its inclusion. If I was going to add more ricotta, I think it would be worth experimenting with leaving the egg out. Some of my gnocchis were 'rustic' in final appearance. Not a bad thing but I have seen them rolled in a ball and then gently pressed with a fork - I think I will do that next time.