There it is. A kitchen disaster. The family was waiting. Dinner was late. And the main dish–spinach and ricotta gnocchi–was disintegrating in the poaching liquid. Disintegrating! Thank god there weren’t any guests.
“Now I know how people who don’t cook feel,” I said to my husband as we sat down to the rest of the meal.
“What do you mean, now you know?” he replied.
“Just that you’d spend all this time and have this idea of how delicious it was going to be and then to watch it all fall apart before your eyes and not be able to do anything about it. It’s so depressing.”
“What seems worse,” said the sage one in this relationship, “is to cook something really mediocre and just eat it because it’s there and at least it’s not disgusting. That’s why I don’t like to cook much anymore.”
I flew towards the sun. I reached too high trying to use up the spinach and half-tub of ricotta before either went bad. Like Icarus, my wings melted. Well, my gnocchi melted, anyway.
So I tried pan-frying the ones I hadn’t cooked yet.
Not pretty, but edible–even tasty. But not pretty. Ernie ate a bunch of them, but what child wouldn’t down a plate of butter-soaked cheese dumplings? Have no doubt, they were butter-soaked! That was where the “tasty” part came in.
Luckily I’d also cooked up some garlicky potatoes and caraway-scented red cabbage, which was delicious and rather beautiful.
As I said, I’d forgotten about red cabbage. I’m happy for the reminder.
Our produce drawer is empty and awaiting the CSA box tomorrow.
The Dinner Files :: Vindication | 18-Mar-08 at 12:33 pm | Permalink
[...] didn’t think I wasn’t going to make ricotta gnocchi again real soon, did you? They floated! They stayed together! They were delicious. They were a bit [...]