Gnocchi, bacon, egg breakfast

I put a small amount of butter in the potato for flavor and that was a mistake. I didn't think that would demand more flour, and the point is to use as little flour as possible.

These gnocchi are light and tender as can be. They are so delicate that it makes impressing marks on them a bit difficult. They tend to smash rather than roll. I do not have the knack for this. The idea is to create ridges for sauce to adhere.

Generous olive oil keeps the gnocchi from sticking.

I used a regular skillet, not a non-stick skillet. My gnocchi stuck to the frying pan. It was loosened with a splash of white wine and it came right off. The same pan the bacon was fried, the bacon grease poured out with the bits remaining. All that was picked up by the wine. Wine and butter makes a better sauce than wine and olive oil. But there you go. Sage is added here. 

These light delicate pillows of potato and egg are wonderful. It is a nice changed from hashed browned potatoes. And there is still some left. Only half is plated. That's one half a potato up there at the top. 

Gnocchi, salad with feta

A dressing is prepared of feta and cream along with a salad of lettuce and grapes. 

Gnocchi is prepared with one potato and one egg and fried in butter, then cream poured into the pan to pick up the remaining seasoning and butter for a warm sauce. 

The four simple elements are brought together on the plate for one glorious whole. 

Potato stabbed all the way through multiple times. It almost comes apart, to dry it out as much as possible while cooking in the microwave.

An Egg! Straight from the refrigerator. We do that in the U.S.  It is warming up before touching the potatoes. 

In a flurry of frenetic but precise activity, medium high heat, and dramatic flourishes, the gnocchi are fried in butter quickly and thoroughly rolled on all sides, lifted out and plated, and the pan doused with cream and cleared onto the plate.

Shallow fried gnocchi

Well, an obvious crime of passion. Nobody stabs a potato this many times, so thoroughly front and back and all around and half the way through like this, not without passion. It is as if the murderer intended for the potato to become as completely dehydrated as possible while undergoing the killing torture of microwaving.

And it gets worse, much worse. 

The potato is starchy already but you don't know how starchy, nor how wet, nor how much egg it will take up, as little flour as possible is tapped and the pile handled as little as possible to get it to hold its shape. Otherwise it turns to paste, and that is not good. 

Smile for the camera and say, "Is that cheese? Please."  The red is hot chipotle. 

Hot water to temper the egg to room temperature. 

Potato, egg, bacon, cream sauce

The power and the glory of commonplace potato is fully actualized with the assistance of fortified cream sauce. This is breakfast of egg and bacon with potato and toast in gnocchi form.  The toast in the state of flour that helps make near pasta out of potato. Pasta but not quite, more fluffy than that. These are soft as clouds.

Potato clouds studded with bacon bits, what's not to like? 

Do not smash the potato.

It's be kind to the baked potato day.

Fluff the potato.

But eventually you'll have to press. 

Press eventually, but do not smash. Got it?

A potato is microwaved and riced. If you don't have a ricer then push through a strainer, not a fine strainer but a coarse strainer. If you lack a ricer and also lack a coarse strainer then grate the cooked potato so the bits fall into loose piles of starch grains. 

Keep it loose. 

Beaten egg is drizzled loosely onto the loosely piled potato.

Along with the minimum amount of flour possible loosely combined, handled loosely.

The whole time thinking, "Am I doing this loosely enough? How will it hold together if I keep it this loose? Will a thing loose as this even work? This seems too loose."

My nutmeg was down to remnant bits so that's replenished. 

Nutmeg goes with cream.

Heated cream would work all by itself, this is enhanced with tiny nearly imperceptible amounts of

* butter, can you believe I put butter in cream?

* mustard powder

* garlic powder

* coriander seed powder

* s/white p

This gnocchi is shallow fried because I had the oil right there available, otherwise they'd be sautéed in butter and probably with sage.