What a Night...

Have you ever had one of "those" days? I had one last night. I had this week's menu planned and had chicken out to thaw. Then I saw an Olive Garden commercial. I sat down at my computer and looked at their menu. I came across a chicken dish called Chicken & Gnocchi Veronese. It is sautéed chicken with Italian dumplings and roasted red peppers in a parmesan and ricotta cheese sauce. Yum that looked great. I did a search for this recipe and found one on RecipeZaar.com. Hmm... I didn't have any fresh peppers but I did have roasted red peppers in a jar. So I used those. Then the next hmmm moment, I did have any heavy cream so I searched for the alternative.

After finding the alternatives for the peppers and cream I moved onto the gnocchi dough. I have never eaten a gnocchi in my entire life. (I also saw an episode on the Food Network where the chef Anne Burrel making gnocchi). I have never made them before and have wanted to try to make them. Oiy, what was I thinking. I made the gnocchi dough while the chicken was marinating. Then came across a couple of road blocks:

First, I don't own a potato ricer so I had to mash them by hand.

Second, I'm not sure if I had enough flour. I added a little her and a little there just so it wouldn't be so sticky. I finally got it to a consistency to where I can roll them into logs. I made the little "dumplings" out of half the recipe. Thank goodness my husband helped me with this meal and a glass of wine.

Thirdly, (is that proper English???) my oldest son came in to help. He mixed the ricotta, parmesan and the cream. I pour it in the pan and it looked like the ricotta didn't mix in "well".

Let's just say I made it through the recipe and served the meal. I was so upset with the way it came out I couldn't bring myself to take a photo. Since we have never had gnocchi before, we didn't know what type of texture or taste they are suppose to have. The one person that I know of that could have helped me and explained the process happens to be on vacation. Melissa, I was practically in tears. So I had a second glass of wine and whined all night about the darn meal.