One way or another, my gnocchi needed to be rescued

Tired of ads? Subscribers enjoy a distraction-free reading experience.

I’ll admit it was an odd thing to do at a restaurant, but after my friend Karen and I sat down and ordered ice tea, I discreetly pulled 4 homemade gnocchis, wrapped in foil, out of my purse.

“Karen, you grew up with gnocchi, didn’t you?” I asked, opening the foil and pushing the gnocchi in her direction. “Could you taste these and tell me what’s missing?”

“Oh, you mean gnocchi,” she said, subtly correcting my pronunciation and gamely biting into one of the fresh offerings from the Times Leader test kitchen.

“Don’t worry about hurting my feelings,” I said. “Even though they have lemon zest and nutmeg in them, they taste so plain.”

Leaning toward me, Karen dropped her voice to a conspirator’s whisper and said: “What they’re missing is sauce.”

It felt like the dawning of comprehension.

I’d found this recipe for Swiss Chard Gnocchi in a cookbook, and since it said to pour lemon juice over the gnocchi before serving, I thought that was the absolute final touch. Hmm. Somehow I hadn’t thought of gnocchi as being like other kinds of pasta so you probably wouldn’t just eat it plain just as you wouldn’t eat a bowl of plain spaghetti.

“You can put tomato sauce on it; I prefer Alfredo,” Karen suggested as I used a tortilla chip to scoop some salsa from a dish and pour it over the gnocchi. (Did I mention we were in a Mexican restaurant?)

“Yes, that’s better,” Karen said of the added flavor. “And your gnocchi are light and fluffy. You did a good job.”

While we proceeded to eat the enchiladas and fajitas we’d ordered, I felt reassured. And of course I was laughing about my kitchen exploits.

Earlier in the day, after Mark had predicted no one in the newsroom would like my Swiss Chard Gnocchi, I discovered that no one in the newsroom even wanted to try my Swiss Chard Gnocchi.

“No, I just can’t do that,” Bill O’Boyle said.

“I just ate a sandwich,” Jen Learn-Andes said.

Luckily for me, Karen was game when I met her for lunch. “Some people would say it’s not gnocchi if it doesn’t have potatoes,” she said when I told her the ingredients. “But that can be very heavy. This is nice and light.”

Now, the story could end here … except that half of my raw gnocchi mix was still in the refrigerator at home. And that evening Mark decided to have a go at it. He added more flour and more grated Parmesan to the mix, used our mixer to incorporate it (I had been using a spoon and my hands) and formed more gnocchi. After he boiled them he topped them with still more grated Parmesan and pronounced them “pretty darned good.”

I tried one, and it did seem a lot more flavorful.

“You must have done something wrong with the ingredients,” Mark told me.

At that point I told him that because I had a container with 1 and 3/4 cups of ricotta, I decided to use 1 3/4 cups of flour, too, and increase everything else proportionately — and apparently that’s where I went astray.

Earlier in the day it seemed like Karen had come to my rescue. Later it seemed that Mark came to my rescue. Well, thank you both. And with apologies to “The Essential Vegetarian Cookbook,” whose recipe I must have screwed up, here is the original recipe:

Swiss Chard Ricotta Gnocchi

1 cup non-fat or part-skim ricotta cheese

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour, plus additional for dusting

4 cups fresh Swiss chard or spinach, thoroughy cleaned and chopped, or one 10-ounce package frozen chopped Swiss chard or spinach, thawed and squeezed dry

1 egg lightly, beaten

2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese

pinch ground nutmeg

1 lemon

In a large mixing bowl combine the ricotta, flour, Swiss chard or spinach, egg, Parmesan and nutmeg. Grate 1 teaspoon of zest from the lemon and stir into the mixture. Squeeze the juice from the lemon and set aside.

Flour your hands and roll the mixture into walnut-sized balls.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add the gnocchi about 5 to 8 at a time and boil until they rise to the surface, about 3 minutes. Let them boil 1 minute longer, then scoop them out with a slotted spoon and transfer to paper towels to drain. Repeat this process until all the gnocchi are cooked. Sprinkle with the reserved lemon juice and serve.