Experimenting with Gnocchi

Copyright 2012 LtDan'sKitchen blogs

I have featured gnocchi in this blog before but I have this idea to try and make a gluten and an egg free version. I've found some recipes where rice flour is used and I've also seen versions where they omit the use of eggs and still achieve a light and fluffy gnocchi. However, I have not come across where both the flour and the egg were substituted and omitted respectively. I'm sure it is out there. Having made enough gnocchis to last me a lifetime, I was confident that I can pull this off. The other plan was to dress the gnocchi with a bechamel sauce-based ragu although I ended up using a regular ragu.

Copyright 2012 LtDan'sKitchen blogs

The problem with an eggless gnocchi is that it does get more fussy when it comes to shaping them. The gnocchi dough itself looks like a regular gnocchi dough but once you try to work with it, it does get a bit crumbly. Not helping is the use of rice flour, which although fine in texture, does not hold the dough as tightly as wheat flour. I ended up adding just enough water to hold the dough together to allow me to form them in shapes. When it came to cooking them, they come out of the simmering water a bit more fragile so dunking them in cold water right away is essential.

After all this fuss, I decided against posting the recipe. It was far from successful but the idea is definitely a good one. I still ended up with a tasty gnocchi which is not bad but the recipe itself needs more experimenting before it can be considered a success.