i'm nervous about cooking with flour and water (really), so polenta and gnocchi in the last week has been a good challenge. yvonne made the polenta from a recipe that i'd picked out from brisbane chef philip johnson's brilliant "classic ecco" 'cookbook. it was the second time we'd made 'wet' polenta so the cooking was a shared conversation. then the gnocchi a couple of nights ago - recipe from the same cookbook. as well as fantastic meals, johnson is excellent for basic techniques. on both occasions, the recipe was so successful that my fear of these foods has evaporated... i highly recommend this book. here's a quick summary of the two recipes.
Gnocchi
steam 750g potatoes in their jackets. I had a bag of no-name baby potatoes that were on sale. no idea what type, and not really 'baby', but smallish. and yes, they were steamed. Peel while still quite warm (the painful part) and either put through a sieve or potato ricer (bought one for $11 recently. makes all the difference). I used the finest ricing disk.
fold potato gently into 150g strong flour. sing to it while you're doing this. i'm sure it will help you fold gently. I have no idea what strong flour is. I used "000" flour which costs a bit more. I had bought my first ever bag of it because its supposed to be good for pasta, and there was just enough left. I don't know why it's called "000". there were no secret agents involved. then gently add 1 lightly beaten egg and 50 gm grated parmesan cheese (I used the regular supermarket brand shredded stuff, not the real deal). add a pinch of nutmeg and salt (Murray River pink ...) and black pepper.