masterchef and potato gnocchi with exotic mushrooms

masterchef and potato gnocchi with exotic mushrooms

• 13 Jun 2012

I have a very small kitchen so I try to keep my kitchen utensils down to the bare essentials. When I was home at Christmas, my parents had invested in a potato ricer, still unused. I’ve always used a potato masher to deal with my spuds, but as one of my friends swears by a potato ricer, I thought I’d give it a go. The ricer was easy to use, easy to clean and made lovely mashed potatoes so I was sold. It took me a while but I finally bought a potato ricer a few weeks ago, now known as the 'contraption'. My kitchen is no larger than before so the contraption now lives carefully wrapped in a plastic bag in my broom cupboard, which brings me indirectly to MasterChef.



A few weeks ago I was watching one of the Friday night master classes where Gary made potato gnocchi with exotic mushrooms I looked at the potato ricer languishing in my broom cupboard and decided to try out the recipe. I bought a packet of exotic mushrooms at my local fruit market and had everything else I needed in the pantry or the fridge.



I made a batch of potato gnocchi and not much else was needed apart from the mushrooms, some garlic, a few herbs, some grated lemon rind and of course I had to add a little bit of my favourite pecorino pepato cheese at the end.



Overall, though not quite a pronto dish, it was still pretty easy to make, specially now I have a contraption of my own.

I'll see you all again next week, 

Jillian