Every time I watch a cooking programme, it inspires me to get off my fat tush and whip up some magic in my little kitchen. First, it was watching Kylie Kwong. Then, it was Julie and Julia (which I might add, taught me how to dice onions). Now, it is Master Chef Australia.
Each time I watch an episode of Master Chef, I get really inspired. Plus, the contestants make cooking look so bleddy easy. After watching the one where the contestants had to cook Matt Moran's Quail with Gnocchi, I thought "pffft... I bet I could do that". I mean how hard could it possibly be?
So I went to the Master Chef webbie, and decided to try the
Potato Gnocchi with Sauteed Prawns in a Burnt Butter Sauce recipe. The recipe was simple enough and only required you to follow 10 steps. Unfortunately, my first attempt can be summed up in one word - disastrous. It was doomed to fail right from the start. To begin, N and I have never tried gnocchi before so we haven't a clue what it's supposed to taste like. Let me walk you through what is required, and what I did.
One, put unpeeled potatoes in pot of cold water and bring it to a boil. Simmer for 30 minutes
or until cooked. I only cooked it for 30 minutes so I think they were a lil uncooked. Brilliant eh? Anyhoo, once the taters are cooked, you need to drain it and let it steam dry for 10 minutes. Then you need to peel (the what is hopefully) cooked potatoes.
Two, pass potatoes through a mouli in batches. Up till today, I had no idea what in the world is a mouli. Fyi, it's a clever little device you use to grate or puree food. Anyway, we do not have that at home so I thought why not use the processor. I think that would normally work fine but instead or processing it, I used the slicing function. At that moment, I thought the potatoes looked pretty grated but on hindsight, I think they were too lumpy. So after mouli-ing the taters, you need to mix in some salt, egg, and grana parmesan. After that, mix in sifted plain flour.
Three, dust bench with flour and mould the mixture into a uniform mound. At this point, my mixture was just a sticky goo. What a mess! I had to add so much extra flour which I think resulted in the gnocchi tasting like boiled dough. If you manage to get the dough to a right consistency, you need to divide it into 4 parts.
Four, dust the bench with flour. So how much flour? I only sprinkled some so my whole bench looked like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man (from Ghostbusters) had just exploded all over it. I wish I had watched the later episode of Master Chef before attempting the gnocchi because George taught me that it's actually quite a fair bit. Don't go crazy because to quote George "you don't want to add flour to your dough, just enough so it doesn't stick". After dusting the bench, you need to roll the dough into a sausage of about 1.5 inch thick. Cut it into 2 cm pieces and lay them out on a grease proof paper. At this point, you also need to have a pot of salted boiling water on stand by.
Five, to make the sauce, you need to heat the butter in a frying pan. When the butter starts frothing, add the sage and fry it until it is crisp. Once you've achieved that, strain the sage and drain it on a paper towel. Reserve the butter and keep it warm.
Six, when you are ready to cook the gnocchi, you need to heat some unsalted butter. Once it is beurre noisette, add the prawns and saute for a minute. Then you need to deglaze with verjuice and add some capers. Fyi, verjuice is made by pressing unripe grapes. It can be used as a substitue for lemon juice or vinegar. Anyway the recipe said a dash of verjuice and that's what I did. However, some other episode of Master Chef demonstrated that George's idea of dash is quite a lot!
Seven, cook gnocchi in small batches. Shortly after it starts floating to the surface, strain, drain, and add to the pan (yes the pan with the butter prawns). Coat it with that scrumptious butter and season with salt and pepper. Toss in some chopped parsley, spoon it into dishes, and drizzle it with the sauce.
Eight, enjoy the (hopefully edible) gnocchi with prawns in a burnt butter sauce. Mine tasted rather revolting but I finished it anyway.
I wouldn't recommend this recipe to amateurs because it really isn't as easy as it looks. I applaud those of you who can successfully prepare gnocchi from scratch. Oh... don't get deceived by my pictures. It is no where as good as it looks.
