Jonathan waxman's gnocchi recipe in nytimes didn't work

[katnat]

Hello all. My first time making gnocchi and I followed the recipe in this week's nytimes for gnocchi with spring vegetables to the letter. I ended up with....mashed potatoes. Sort of. .the interesting thing about this recipe is he used 3 russet potatoes and about 4 tbsps flour. No egg to bind. Then he froze the gnocchi. When time to cook, remove directly from freezer and sauté in pan before adding veg. As soon as I added the gnocchi to the pan, they disintegrated and turned into a mashed potato glop. (lucky it was close friends over for dinner). What went wrong? Anyone else attempt this recipe and have similar experiences? Anyone got a tried and true gnocchi recipe that is as light as air for when I summon my nerves to retry? Thanks all.

[ChiliDude]

Barbara Stacy, The Alitalia book of Authentic Italian Cooking, 1962, and Mario Batali, Simple Italian Food, 1998, both use egg as a binder. Other books in my possession have recipes with no eggs. I'd go with the eggs.

[ChiliDude]

I found this on the internet...

http://www.pasta-recipes-by-italians....

One of the ingredients is an egg.

[mamachef]

One thing you might consider is ricing the potatoes instead of mashing them, and making those cups called for loosely packed cups - if the potatoes are being crushed, there's going to be a higher potato-flour ratio than there would be with riced potatoes tossed with the other ingredients, and that particular ratio seems to be the issue here; not enough binder. There's also the matter of what can happen to a potato compositionally when it's beaten too long - the result is more gluey than potatoey, texturally speaking. Be very delicate when working with it; gnocchi aren't as fogiving as egg noodles.

[HillJ]

http://www.davidrocco.com/recipes/pas...

katnat, I make this basic, rustic, non potato version all the time. If you're not adverse to another version entirely, I can highly recommend the ease and deliciousness of this recipe. David has two other versions on his site that work equally well.

[Jay F]

Mmmm...ricotta and grana padano instead of potatoes. That sounds wonderful.

[chefathome]

Totally with you, HillJ. Rocco has some delicious recipes, that is for sure.

[HillJ]

I just made a batch of spinach gnocchi ala Rocco this afternoon. So light and delicious. I made a walnut sauce and heated some Italian bread with roasted tomatoes. My grandmother would be very proud of me :)

It's Rocco's rustic cooking that I love. Simple, down to earth, great meals.

[goodhealthgourmet]

i finally had a chance to see his show on my flight back East last week...of course i had to pay those thieves at Continental Airlines 6 bucks for the privilege. unfortunately i guess i caught a disappointing episode - he spent most of the time shopping, driving & playing soccer. in fact, the only cooking he did on the show was a frittata that had maybe two ingredients in it besides eggs. i was really hoping for something more interesting!

[HillJ]

hi ghg, I see your point, not every episode is a winner but Rocco's show is not a straight up cooking program. It's one mans tour of his beloved Italy; the highlights often include sites, friends, family, lifestyle and....food. His recipes are never complex and his wife is the co producer. I'd call the show a labor of love...with food prep from various points throughout Italy demonstrated. "The Good Life"

[todao]

When Gnocchi fall apart as you describe it's usually for lack of enough flour.

[ViaSalvatore]

I received Jonathan Waxman's new Italian cookbook yesterday and the first thing I made was the gnocchi. The result was the same as katnat described - frozen potato nuggets turned mashed potatoes. Another recipe I tried from the same cookbook was the biscotti with chocolate and almonds. That was a disaster too. With 4 cups flour, 1/2 stick butter and 3 eggs and no liquid, the dough was dry and adding 3 cups almonds and 2 cups chocolate chunks made the dough even worse, crumbling all over the place. Waste of almonds and Perugina chocolate.

[goodhealthgourmet]

this is such a bummer to hear. i've always liked & respected Waxman, and it's a big disappointment when a chef's published recipes don't turn out. sounds like his recipe testers really dropped the ball.

[jplummerbmc]

sounds like there were perhaps no testers at all! i'm betting they scaled down restaurant recipes without testing the changed quantities.

[aguy239]

I enjoyed the book enormously, but I won't trust the recipes or quantities without cross referencing.

What alarmed me most about the book, however, which I posted elsewhere, was his admonition not to use tin-lined pans, since all such tin contains lead. Now that is inflammatory, and it has me worried. It is one thing to screw up a recipe, it's quite another to put out information that is so fundamentally related to a major health issue.

[jplummerbmc]

I had exactly the same problem: mashed potatoes. Tasty, but still.... The flour seemed like way too little but I decided to trust - foolishly. A weight on the potatoes would have been very useful.

I am still interested in his pan-frying technique and may try again with a more reliable formula.

Also, I still have half my Waxman gnocchi in the freezer... so what to do? Accept that it is frozen mashed potato? Or try maybe baking them?

[goodhealthgourmet]

i think baking the extras is a good idea...and you can toss them with sauce once they've firmed up in the oven, or even smother with sauce & cheese.

[rezpeni]

Nowhere near enough flour it sounds like. For the future what i suggest is having a small pot of boiling water ready when you are making the first gnocchi, check to see if the first few will keep their shape and not fall apart before preceding with the rest.

The amount of flour needed to bind the gnocchi is a variable thing depending on the humidity in the air, the age of the potatoes and their water content, the type of flour, so my basic rule is to start out with too little flour then add until the mixture binds taking care not to overmix the dough. A set amount in a recipe will never be exactly right.

Are you saying you just put the raw gnocchi in a saute pan without boiling them first?

[goodhealthgourmet]

Are you saying you just put the raw gnocchi in a saute pan without boiling them first?
~~~~~~~~~
Waxman's recipe calls for tossing the frozen gnocchi directly into a saute pan - no boiling.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/din...

[rezpeni]

Well that's a new one on me, I've done pan fried gnocchi in butter before but after boiling first. I would think just frying them would make them a little stodgy and leaden? Maybe someone else on here has done this successfully.

[suse]

Are you wedded to using potatoes? For the quickest, lightest, easiest ricotta gnocchi recipe ever, check out the recipe on deliciousdays.com. I make them as a quick dinner.
http://www.deliciousdays.com/archives...

[roxlet]

When I read that recipe, it seemed like there was too little flour. I would rely on Marcella Hazan more that Jonathan Waxman when it comes to gnocchi.

[goodhealthgourmet]

egg isn't required for gnocchi, but it can make the dough easier to handle. the problem with that recipe as written is the arbitrary potato amount. his idea of a "large" potato may not be the same as yours, and you need just the right ratio of potato to flour to ensure that the gnocchi hold together...the amount of potato really should be listed by weight.

you might want to check out these threads for help:
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/483399
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/277799
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/710686