My Glamorous Gnocchi & Wine Night
Well.
I came home so excited to FINALLY try my very first Chrissy Teigen cookbook recipe, which I chose to be the Sweet Potato Gnocci In Brown Butter Sage Sauce. I decided it was a semi-healthy (but non-salad) option since the sweet potato is the healthiest thing ever (don’t mind the stick of butter and giant dollop of whole milk ricotta).
So I read the recipe once through with my glass of Chardonnay, which is what all the most important chef’s do, and got to work.
Simple plan: make a quick dough, boil it in water salted to taste like the sea, strain, toss in buttery sage heaven. Done.
NOPE.
After I’ve crafted some beautiful, rustic, gorgeous, fluffy gnocci balls using my fancy pasta cutter thingy (that I got at a fancy Pasta and Prosecco class), I reach over for my phone to document this beautifulness, and somehow knock my glass of wine over in the process… Which completely dissolved into about 76 shards of glass. On. My. Fluffy. Gnocci. Balls.
I want to panic and get mad, but I’m home alone and feeling very mature, and self-soothing, and VERY optimistic.
“It’s ok, I’ve got this.” I say to myself. I sop up the Chardonnay and all the glass, and it seems there are only a few pieces of broken glass near the gnocci fluff balls, so I just toss about 1/5 of those little clouds away. No biggie.
Then I text my mom:
“I’m making gnocchi and a wine glass broke near my dough. I don’t think any glass got in it at all … safe to still cook? How bad is teeny tiny shards of glass to eat????”
And I send a pic of the clean, untouched, hopefully un-glass-filled gnocchi pillows.
She responds: “Turn off the lights and use a flashlight to see if you have any shards in your dough.”
Hmmm. Nah.
Apparently I’m too lazy to look for a flashlight. Apparently this wonderful idea is more inconvenient to me than the potential of going to the ER after the aforementioned wine glass tears my intestines to shreds.
Note to self: buy flashlight. Place in kitchen.
I respond to mom: “I threw away the half that were near the glass. I touched all the rest”, which I did. That was my offering for mom to give EXTRA cautionary advice, which she doesn’t, so clearly I’m safe.
Mom: “ok, chew safely!”
Mom: “It’s like eating a pigeon with birdshot.”
Me: “YES! Good call.”
Instant relief. I pause for a moment to smile and realize that to most people, this comment is probably totally absurd. But if you bird hunt, which we do, you know all about how tiny shotgun shells can be eaten by accident . Par for the course.
I clean up my glassy wine mess, start my butter and sage potion that is so epic smelling, and plop all the gnocchi puffs into the water.
I’ve regained composure. I don’t pour more wine, because clearly I need all focus and faculties for this.
I place my strainer in the sink, slip on the hot mitts, and pour the hot gnocchi’s into the strainer, which promptly TIPS OVER INTO THE FREAKING SINK.
By the time the steam had cleared I barely even knew what had happened! In one moment I’m enjoying my Italian facial, and the next I’m like, WHAT??!!!
I somehow manage to save about 9 of my now totally limited edition, completely VIP, miracle gnocchi babies.
I WILL NOT BE DETERRED.
I scoop these precious cushion-cut diamond gnocchi’s into the buttery amazingness (which is now vastly over-taking my very limited supply of gnocchi), toss in some parmesan and … laugh.
Because that is all you can do.
I retrieve my magical puffs after their butter bath and slide them into a bowl. Add more parm, and they look amazing. They taste amazing too, but I’m eating them so slowly to try and feel around for the micro-wine-glass-shards that I’m making my jaw slide around in a funny way that actually does kind of hurt. I get over that and keep eating.
I obviously eat the WHOLE BOWL of exclusive edition appetizer gnocchi, which is superb. Props Chrissy Teigen you hilarious and sassy supermodel chef lady! I’d raise a glass to you, but would then probably drop it and … well, you know the rest.