Handmade gnocchi

It's still the bank holiday weekend; which has been a big cooking and eating weekend in our household. This theme continued today with the handmade gnocchi that I tried to make for dinner.

Inspiration struck when an Italian tomato produce and olive oil marketing booklet fell out of the Sunday Times yesterday. Whilst flicking through it, I was struck by the ricotta dumplings (didn't have the ingredients) and the gnocchi, which I have always wanted to perfect, so gave their version of the recipe a go; with my own tweaks of course.

I have to admit I had a spectacular failure once with a ricotta and spinach gnocchi (an Olive recipe), which I was hoping not to replicate on this occassion. However, I did not succeed. I have presented the recipe below to see if anyone out there has any more success. Was it me, or was it the recipe!?

What you will need
1kg floury potatoes (king edwards)
3 large eggs
300g white flour
Vegetable stock cube

So, I started by boiling the potatoes in the vegetable stock (water + stock cube) for 25-30 minutes until cooked through. I then peeled the potatoes whilst still hot (burning palms in the process). These were then mashed. In fact, I went through all the effort of passing through a sieve. I then mixed in the egg and the flour. At this point, the dough seemed to be coming together.

It was when I turned the dough out on to the floured board for rolling into sausages that I realised how disastrously this had gone. I kept trying to add flour to bring the mash together into a dough, but no joy. I think I must have added another 50-70g of flour. So this went into the bin.

The plan had been for gnocchi alla sorrentina, but with no back up shop-bought gnocchi to compensate, we will have to have spaghetti alla sorrentina instead.

So, for the moment, the perfect gnocchi continues to evade me!