Sweet Potato Gnocci Part II The tasting...

I made the sweet potato gnocchi. It’s pretty good for a first effort but I think I can do better. I found that because sweet potatoes are much more moist than potatoes I used a lot more flour, which in turn made the gnocchi more dense. Instead of light pillows of potato goodness I had the equivalent of a latex pillow, very dense, but good. I bet I can improve with a little tweaking. I need to figure out how to dry out the sweet potatoes a bit. I think if I slice them and bake them on a low heat for a longer they should end up dryer, then I can send them through the food mill or the food processor and see what happens!

The sauce was also a good first effort but by no means the end of the line. I used ½ bottle of pinot noir, ½ box of beef stock, 2 pats of butter, poultry gravy mix (I haven’t been about to pick up the beef gravy mix yet), ginger, thyme, tarragon, rosemary, basil, salt, and pepper. I definitely used way too much ginger. I had to work to counteract the gingery kick by adding the thyme and tarragon. I think there were a few too many flavors going on all at once. Next time I’m going to cut back a bit. I’ll take out the ginger and basil and see where that takes me.

I used a neat little trick with the pepper. I wanted a nice strong peppery flavor so I took some whole peppercorns and put them in a plastic bag and crushed them with a meat tenderizer. I suppose if I had a mortar and pestle I wouldn’t need to do that, but why waste the money on a mortar and pestle when I can smash things with a hammer?

After we ate dinner I realized how much stuff was floating in my sauce and decided that I needed to do something about that. Before I packed up the leftovers for lunch I strained the gravy through a mesh strainer to remove all the bits and pieces of spices. Now I have a velvety smooth sauce! The only thing I need to do now is figure out how to thicken it up a bit without adding cream or too much flour. Time for more brainstorming.