Gnocchi Number One

Eggs Benedict turned out better this week, but still not great. Last week I over-cooked everything, so naturally, I under-cooked everything this week. Poached eggs were too runny (2 minutes is also not better than 3), and the Hollandaise came out too runny. I'm sure I was afraid of over-cooking the egg yolks again and pulled them off too soon.

Sourdough loaf this week took an interesting turn. After a couple weeks of amazing Sourdough flavor, we're edging back toward the good old White Bread loaf we started out with a couple months ago. Trying to think about how we can keep the starter as sour as we want it while keeping up with feedings as it needs. Tricky balance that we still have yet to even begin figuring out.

For our first attempt at Gnocchi, I turned to my new obsession, Nancy Silverton. In her Mozza Cookbook, she has a Gnocchi with Duck Ragu recipe that we decided to try. Unfortunately, the meat in our grocery store is not exactly the greatest, and unless we wanted to buy a whole frozen duck (that felt harder than a rock this morning in the grocery store freezer), then we needed to find an alternative. So we bought Lamb instead.

The meal turned out amazing. The gnocchi was actually gnocchi for the first time, instead of turning into mashed potatoes at the last minute. I would attribute some of that to the straining technique we used this time vs. what we've done in past attempts. When we used a colander in the sink to drain the water, the gnocchi seemed to always condense and mush together into a fancy version of mashed potatoes. Using the wire strainer to pull the gnocchi out of the water prevented that from happening this time, and made a huge difference. The size of the gnocchi turned out a little large. I think they're supposed to be smaller... But otherwise, they were fantastic! (Thank you, Nancy!!)

The sauce was very good. The Lamb was a good substitute for the Duck, although we'd like to try and actually find Duck Legs one of the next times we try this. And the idea of maybe adding a little heat was intriguing. We keep hearing about Calabrian chili sauce. Maybe that would be good here? We'd also be interested in trying a Brown Butter sauce instead, or something maybe a little less acidic. Overall though, an amazing start to this cooking challenge!