Sweet Potato Gnocchi

To accompany the focaccia bread, I wanted to make something Italian (uh-oh.. is gnocchi even Italian?) So I went to the epicurious website which is pretty new to me, and found this recipe for Sweet Potato Gnocchi. Brett likes gnocchi and sweet potatoes, and I’ve never had gnocchi before, so I decided that we could give it a shot. The dough was fun to make (Brett always takes the lead on bread, so I haven’t messed with dough very much.) It involved the scooped out innards of a baked sweet potato, ricotta cheese, parmesan cheese, brown sugar, salt, fresh nutmeg, and of course, flour. Once I got it all mixed together, I divided it into equal parts.

Then I rolled each ball out into a long log, and cut it into inch chunks. Brett helped me form them into nicer little nuggets. He lined his up perfectly, as is shown here. One guess what mine looked like.

By this point our water was boiling, so we salted it and I had Brett drop the nuggets in (I didn’t want to get splashed.) We were able to fit about half in. It was pretty neat because when they are done cooking, they pop right up to the surface. I let them go slightly longer because when they popped up was way short of the time that the recipe recommended. We did 2 batches and got them all nicely cooked.

Then I attempted to make the brown butter sage sauce for the gnocchi. The sage was way too strong and basically ruined the sauce. I should have been more cautious. We strained the sage out, which did help, but the damage was already done. Here is the finished product.

At this point it was 8 o’clock and I was starving. Thank goodness we had the focaccia bread, because the gnocchi was not to my liking. I ate a few, but not only did I dislike the sauce, but the texture bothered me. Brett says that the gnocchi were a good consistency, so that’s a Kim problem. At one point I realized that I was just trying to get one down, and I decided I couldn’t eat anymore. Brett ate all of his (and then mine for lunch the next day) so I guess I can say that it was a partial success. However, neither of us enjoyed the brown butter sage sauce. YUCK! Needless to say, I will not be making this again.