Thanks, Play-doh

Remember your old school Play-doh days? The strangely and deliciously stinky cans of multi-colored clay that you squished and squashed and molded into myriad shapes, then left to dry and get crusty and break off into pieces that would get in the carpet and make your mom fuss at you? I've moved on from my Play-doh days, but it turns out I learned a valuable skill.

I made gnocchi!! If being a carb addict is wrong, I don't wanna be right. I love anything starchy or doughy - chicken and dumplings, potstickers, pierogies. Homestyle noodles, spaetzle, tortellini. Tater tots, even. Heck, I'd eat a whole loaf of sourdough one toasted buttery slice at a time. OK, maybe two at a time. Anyway...although I am smitten with all these things, I am not particularly experienced at making any of them from scratch. Enter potato gnocchi!

Earlier this week, I braised a pork shoulder with mushrooms, onions and tomatoes and wanted a good starchy side to soak up all the yummy gravy. I wasn't feeling pasta and didn't have any polenta, but I did have russet potatoes, eggs and flour. So I gave gnocchi a whirl, and it turned out surprisingly well. With guidance from a few online recipes, I baked a few potatoes, peeled off the skin, ran them through the ricer and let the fluffy potatoes cool. Then I blended in some all-purpose flour and an egg yolk, rolled the resulting dough into long skinny ropes (Play-doh style), cut them into little dumplings and rolled them against the tines of a fork to produce the requisite ridges.

You don't want to add too much flour or work the dough too much or the gnocchi will be heavy and tough. I think I was nervous about that, so I went the other way and maybe didn't add quite enough flour. They turned out nice and light, but after I cooked them in the water and tossed them with butter in a hot pan, some of them fell apart a little bit. But with some cracked black pepper and a sprinkle of parmesan, they tasted just fine...definitely worth another try. Inexpensive, fun to make, and way tastier than Play-doh.