Gnocchi at cooking school

At last I returned to cooking school, but no worries, I was still cooking at home since someone else doesn't. So today's lesson was quite easy and there were only 3 of us in total, which was great. We made gnocchi in a cream sauce with large lima beans and peas.

I have never made gnocchi before, so I was interested to see what the fuss was all about. So we boiled some potatoes until they were soft and then made sure all the water was drained off of them. Then, in a bowl we added some salt and powdered cheese (but you can use parm), flour, along with the potatoes and started mixing, as well as, breaking up the potatoes. when it was nicely mixed, we took it out and rolled it all together and then cut it into 3 pieces. Each of one of us had to roll it out like a log, about 40cm long and then cut the log into pieces. We formed the pieces into squares and then it was time to boil. The cream sauce was milk, fresh cream, salt and pepper. We added in the cooked gnocchi, lima beans, and peas and some mascarpone cheese. Wa la, it was ready.

We also made a pudding like thing that used Japanese uni (still not sure what this is, but she said it was a type of fish). Well, we mixed fresh cream, milk, water, and egg. Then we strained it and added in consumme powder, salt, tomato paste, pepper and sugar. Mixed it around and then added in the uni and mixed that around. We separated them into ramicans and cooked them in the oven for 20 minutes. After that we added some more "uni" on top of the baked pudding and baked for 5 more minutes.
The other japanese thing we made used "udo" a root vegetable that is bitter from what my teacher said. First we boiled some "huki" and its leaves (its similar to celery). Then in the same water we added some vinegar and boiled the "udo" until it was soft. The vinegar is suppose to help with bitter taste and smell. With the "huki (not hooka)" leaves, we cut them up and added them to some mayo and squeezed some lemon. Then we cut the "huki" into slices and placed this mayo stuff on it and then to the oven they went. Pretty simple meal as you can see.



So the "huki" thing wasn't bad, but too much mayo. The pudding/jello "uni" dish was ok. The "uni" texture was like mush paste and when eaten with the pudding stuff, it was ok. I didn't really like it by itself, so needless to say, I didn't finish that. We also had a salad topped with tomatos, green beans and the "huki", which I liked and finished. The gnocchi was gnocchi and very thick, which is not how I remember it from the last time I had it. Mixed with the lima beans and peas in the cream sauce, it was good, but way too much. I ate about half of it. There was suppose to be someone else in the class, but they cancelled, so each of us got more than we were suppose to. Overall, a decent menu, but not my favorite. I think I may try gnocchi again, but with another veggie like pumpkin or something. At least I know how to make it now.
Also my count continues because I tried to talk to the other cooks in Japanese and one of them didn't know much English so that didn't go so well. can't remember what the count is now, but suffice to say it this is about right including my troubles during japanese class.

Japanese language - 20
Amanda - 9