Sweet Potato Gnocchi Fail - But a nice creamy sauce

I realized that I had never shared the pictures of my failed sweet potato gnocchi attempt (mentioned in the previous post.)

A couple of the dumplings held their shape, but I had to rescue them from the boiling water with a slotted spoon. Whoops! I am not sure what was off about my recipe, but I will add more egg and flour next time. I think the sweet potatoes soaked up more liquid than the russet potatoes normally do.

I cannot find my notes on the sauce, but I started with some thickened flour and butter, added heavy cream and some powdered sage. I may have added a tiny bit of brown sugar. The sauce was fantastic, too bad it was like soup with my gnocchi!

Homemade gnocchi

It was time for me to try making homemade gnocchi all by myself. I started with 1lb 9oz of russet potatoes and boiled them until they were soft (30 min).

After they were pealed and put through the ricer, I had 1 lb of potatos to work with for the dough.

It really does look like rice!

For the dough I used 1 lb of the riced potatoes, 2.5 oz flour, 2 tsp salt and 1 egg. This ended up being fairly salty, so the sauce didn't need any additional salt.

I still don't have a gnocchi board, so I scored them with the back of a fork.

I'm not sure the scoring made a huge difference, but it was easy enough to finish rolling out the entire batch of dough.

I wanted to make the gnocchi so badly that I hadn't given much thought to the sauce. I like to use a creamy pesto mix for gnocchi, but I couldn't bring myself to use a packaged sauce on my first batch of homemade gnocchi. I therefore whipped up a simple browned butter sauce.

I thought the packaged gnocchi I bought from Trader Joe's cooked up fast... but man these started floating almost as soon as I had them in the pot! I put them in a bowl to toss with the sauce, but the gnocchi were so soft that some of them got a bit squished. Next time, I'll either put them directly in the pan with the sauce or directly into the serving bowl.

Needless to say, Keith was very excited to come home for dinner. The whole process is so yummy, I know I will be making gnocchi a lot. Soon I'll have to try out some variations and see how well they keep frozen.

Pasta Workshop

Keith and I received a gift for a private cooking lesson from Artepicure last Christmas. We made sure to take advantage of this class before we moved away from the Boston area. The walk to the school was a little sketchy, but the classroom itself was full of character. The instructor and his wife live in the studio, and they have the most incredible collection of art... the walls are COMPLETELY covered with their collections.


The Class: Pasta Workshop
This class teaches the art of fresh pasta making. We will make potato gnocchi, filled ravioli and a hand formed pasta shape. This class will explain the science behind the choice of different flours, the proper cooking techniques for obtaining the best results, which sauces go with what shapes and the ease in which anyone, with a little understanding, can create beautiful artisan pasta at home.

My one disappointment with the class was that Keith and I did not prepare the sauces that went with pastas. But the meal we prepared was fantastic.

The best tip of the day was to use a food scale to measure the ingredients for pasta. The volume of flour can change a lot depending on humidity, but if you rely on the weight then you will get perfect pasta dough every time.

Two pasta doughs, one with egg (right) and the other without (left). The eggless dough was easier to kneed.

We made an egg pasta dough to create the butternut squash ravioli. (The instructor made the filling, but this is something that I've done myself before.) The big aid was how to fill and cut the ravioli easily (see pictures below.) When I made ravioli myself, I cut out circles and then folded them in half with the filling on the inside. I can see how I could make them much faster using this method. I also learned how great it is to use a pasta roller - rolling the dough out by hand is so hard!

I forgot to take a picture of the final dish, but the ravioli were served in a sage and browned butter sauce.

The second pasta we made was Orrechietti (translation - little ears). These were completely hand shaped. First, you roll out the dough into a snake, and then cut it with the pastry scraper into even pieces. You then press each piece down with your thumb to form the ear-shaped pasta.

I thought the flavor of the dough was great, but the texture of the shape was a bit reminiscent of spaghetti-o's (especially since it was served with a tomato sauce.) This would be a great shape to make with kids - it is a fun "craft" project.

Last (but not least), we made gnocchi. This was the dish that we were anticipating the most, since Keith loves gnocchi so much (I love them, too.)

This was the star of the day. These gnocchi just melted in your mouth. They were served in a creamy pesto sauce (just heavy cream and pesto and bam!) I have never tasted gnocchi this fresh in my life. This is a great kind of pasta to make at home, because the equipment that you need is minimal (just a potato ricer). Sure, having a gnocchi board would be great, but you can score them with a fork or just leave them unscored. This dough is so fast to make, I can see myself making gnocchi frequently (which will make Keith very happy!)

Immediately after the class, I went home and added some of the tools from this workshop to our registry (food scale, gnocchi board, pastry wheel and pastry scraper.) After this lesson Keith was also on board for the KitchenAid Pasta Roller Attachment)


Class Notes (I am afraid that I am going to loose the sheet that came with the class, so I am making note of the proportions for each of the pasta doughs here. )

• Egg Pasta Dough
• 9 oz all-purpose flour (2 cups spooned and leveled)
  
• 1 tablespoon kosher salt (or 1 tsp table salt)
• 2 large eggs
• 1-3 tablespoons cold water
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
  
• Pasta Dough
• 12 ounces all purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon kosher salt
• 6+ ounces cold water
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
  
• Gnocchi
  
• 1.5 lbs russet potatoes (We learned that the most common error in gnocchi preparation was the wrong choice of potatoes.)
• 3.5 ounces unbleached all purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon kosher salt
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
  

Roasted Butternut Squash Ravioli with a Sage Brown Butter Sauce

This is the dish that made me want to make homemade ravioli. I used the pasta dough recipe I published earlier this month to create roasted butternut squash ravioli (recipe by Emeril Lagasse).

One butternut squash was enough for a double batch of the ravioli filling, so you can make a huge batch and freeze the leftover. The ravioli are delicious without any sauce, but the browned butter sage sauce give the meal a sweet touch. Now that I've made browned butter once (and have discovered how easy it is to do), I want to add this to more dishes!

Creamy Vodka Sauce

To continue with this month's Italian theme, I wanted to share with you my first (non marinara) pasta sauce attempt.

Leftover pasta from my first homemade ravioli attempt.

I had pasta leftover from my ravioli experiments, so I wanted to have a spectacular sauce to serve it with. Lucky for me I also had a bunch of fresh tomatoes, heavy cream and some vodka that needed to be used up... So I decided to try to make an Easy Vodka Sauce.

The onions cooking in butter and vodka.

This was also the first time I had ever made my own crushed tomatoes. Do you know how it works? Cut the tomatoes in half, and while holding the skin grate it against a cheese grater. You will end up with an empty skin in your hand some fantastic fresh tomato pulp!

Everything but the cream.

When it was simmering, I kept fearing that it was going to burn, but it did fine. It did splatter a bit, but the mess wiped up quickly.

The cream was added (left) and after the completed mixture finished simmering for 30 min (right)

I followed the recipe exactly, but I think that the 10 minutes with vodka in the beginning cooked all of the vodka off, little of the flavor from it remained! (But it was still a good creamy tomato sauce.)

Yum! Too bad this is not healthy...

Homemade Ravioli

I spent 2 weeks in Italy during the summer of 2010, and I have never had such good pasta in my life. The trip inspired me to try to make my own fresh pasta, and I started this lesson with making Ravioli.

Note: At the time I write this post I have made ravioli on three different occasions, and I have achieved what I think is a good dough proportion. This is not necessarily the recipe that I used in my first attempt!

Ingredients

• 3 C Flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3 tsp olive oil
• 3 whole eggs
• 3 egg yolks
• NOTE: This does not scale up very well. If you want to do a double batch, then I recommend making the dough in two separate batches, especially if you are mixing by hand!
  

Instructions for creating the dough

1. Put flour in a bowl, and crack the eggs into the center. Add oil, and mix slowly until you get a consistent dough. (If you need more liquid, use some of the egg whites remaining from the yolks.)
2. Kneed the dough
3. Cover the dough in plastic wrap, and let it rest for about 20 minutes.
   
4. Roll the dough out as thin as possible, and cut for fettuccine or ravioli.
   

My dough is "resting"

My desire to make homemade ravioli was so great that I started making the dough without giving thought to the fillings! So I searched through my refrigerator, and cut up some precooked turkey kielbasa and mixed it with caramelized onions. (I don't have a recipe for this, but if you want to try it maybe you can replicate the proportions by looking at the image below.)

The filling for my first homemade ravioli.

I rolled out the pasta dough as thin as I could... by hand. I do not recommend trying to roll this dough out by hand as it is really hard to make it thin. The resulting pasta still tastes good, you just have to cook it longer. (My shoulders hurt the next day from the effort of rolling the dough thin enough. I put a cutting board on the floor so I could use my full body weight in the rolling.)

Using a drinking glass as a template, I cut circles out of the dough, then put a little bit of filling in the center of each one. I rubbed some egg yolks mixed with water around the edge of the circle to help "glue" the ravioli together. Note: You want to use a little bit of egg so the dough becomes sticky, this is less than you may think. If you use too much egg, the dough becomes slippery and then it won't stick.

Finally, I put the folded ravioli on a floured pan. When the cookie sheet was full, I placed it in the freezer so the ravioli would not stick to each other.

It took about 8 minutes for these ravioli to cook. If the dough is thinner, it would take a lot less time!

-----------
What did I do with the remaining dough (the scraps from the circles)? I rolled it out, cut it into strips of a fettuccine? Linguine? I'm not good with my pasta shapes! After cutting the dough, I twisted it and stretched it a bit to make the noodles thinner.