Mmm Gnocchi. Said no one. Ever.
I mean, I should love this stuff. I LOVE Italian food. I love food in general come to think of it. So I was super excited to try something new, something which promised to be so simple to make and easy to ‘sauce up’ (so to speak!).
I’ve made pasta before and gnocchi seemed like the next, grown up step in my repertoire. Cooking is an exercise in de-stressing for me, so when I scuttled in from the cold after a full-on day at work, the bus home having eluded me twice, I was in serious need of some relaxation. And things seemed promising. I’d done my research, I knew all the tips:
‘Use an egg to stop it being gloopy!’
‘Don’t overwork the potatoes!’
‘Why not try reverse cowgirl?’…Oops – *ahem* wrong tips!
So, potatoes mashed I added the flour and egg and set about rolling a potato sausage. I’d advise waiting until the potatoes have cooled in future – always a bit disconcerting grasping a warm, firm sausage on your chopping board if you catch my drift. If you don’t catch my drift IT FELT LIKE A WILLY OKAY OMG EEEWWWWW BOYS! Anyway, now that’s out of the way, once cut into little pillows they looked quite cute, the phallus was forgotten, I was feeling rather proud. They didn’t look quite like the cookbook photographs but oh well, nothing ever does right?
I boiled for 1-2 minutes as per instructions. Why anyone boils anything for 1-2 minutes I have no idea, you may as well just leave the food near a fresh teapot all the cooking it does. Safe to say boiling had not improved the look. When is anything ever improved by being soggy?
Still I gave it all my culinary love and no expense was spared – parmesan, thyme, extra virgin olive oil, all yummy things. I settled in for my sophisticated meal for one. It almost even looked good.
It was so bad.
Seriously. Not only did it look like an army of miniature, beige, flaccid penises (penii?) had invaded and set up camp in my pasta sauce, they had the texture of blu-tack that’s been accidentally left out in the sun. I could’ve watched a whole episode of Breaking Bad in the time it would’ve taken to chew through them all. They were gloopy yet firm, soggy yet chalky, tasteless yet foul tasting – bad things. They were ALL THE BAD THINGS. Observe.
The worst part is it’s just too late to do anything else.
Jamie Oliver promised it would be ready in around 20 minutes. I always approach that with a little scepticism, but this shit took hours.
So my ‘glamorous’ tea has consisted of oily mushrooms and peas, fished from around and in between the perpetually phallic potato beasts.
Now there’s a sentence you don’t hear every day.
Yours, Hungry
Faye
afayewithwords 