food Challenge, weeks 18 & 19

Week 18 - Polenta or mussels

As nobody in our family likes mussels, the choice for this week was limited somewhat. For the polenta, I decided that having made soft polenta and set polenta on a couple of occasions, I could not really do either again.

I really ended up running out of time a bit on this one, so in the end made an Orange syrup Polenta cake. I was a bit disappointed with it, as I was hoping for a reasonably dense moist cake, and it was really a bit too spongy and dry for what I wanted.

Verdict 2.5/5

I wouldn't bother with that recipe again, but will try to find one that is more to my liking sometime.

Week 19 - Potatoes or Kumara

This was my week to choose the ingredients. I chose potato because I thought it would be fun to try making gnocchi. I did try making it once, about 15 years ago, and it was dense, doughy and stodgy. In other words a dismal failure.

This time, I made sure I kept the potato very dry by cooking them in their skins in the microwave. I then peeled them, and used the potato ricer to mash them. Then it was time to add the salt and knead the flour in. The dough still felt very light, but given my previous experience I was hoping this was a good thing.

The dough was rolled into long ropes about 1cm thick, then chopped into 2cm pieces. The recipe said to drop them in boiling water, and that they are cooked when they rise to the top. This only took about 2-3 minutes.

We had the gnocchi with a sauce made from fresh Italian style sausages which I took out of their casings, and browned with onion and garlic before simmering with tinned tomatoes. A bit of parmesan cheese on top, and dinner was ready.

The verdict? 3.5/5 from me
4.5/5 from Daryl

The gnocchi was light, not doughy but seemed to me to be lacking in texture. This may be right however as smooth potato mixed with flour is never going to have a lot of texture, I suppose. The sauce was great, and I will definitely do that again.

One recipe for gnocchi that I saw added parmesan cheese to the dough. I would like to try that some time as the flavour would be good. The gnocchi really didn't taste like much... but then I suppose that is reasonable given the ingredients.

All in all, not a dismal failure like my first effort 15 years ago, so maybe I have learnt something!