Tonight, I was in a rush to get home. Some people have children or dogs that they rush home to care for. Others have important emails to send, papers to write or chores to do. Me, I rushed home to tend to four cups of day-old homemade ricotta.
At the time of making the ricotta, I thought it would be easy to consume the delicious treat within the three day time frame advised by the recipe. This has turned out not to be the case. This is surely not a problem for those who practice menu planning, which is something I am always saying I should do. But the reality for me is that experimenting in the kitchen usually comes from a visceral, often impulsive, place. I feel pulled to made a specific item, but not necessarily to place it in the broader context of a menu. This spontaneity is fun for a moment. But, what starts as a leisurely and enjoyable pursuit quickly becomes a time bomb in the fridge. What was once a treasure to be savored, is suddenly a left over with a short shelf life, demanding attention.
So, in an attempt to address my ricotta onus, we made ricotta gnocchi. But first I had to run down the street to my friend’s house to gather eggs from her chickens for the recipe. In return, I left her a pound of fresh ricotta, with stern instructions to consume it right away, essentially passing along the onus. Some friend. Eggs in hand, I headed home to make the dough.
As commanded by the Cooks Illustrated recipe, I let the ricotta drain until it was quite dry, toasted bread crumbs until they were a perfect golden brown, mixed up the dough, rolled it out with a delicate hand, cut perfect gnocchi pillows from it, and plopped them into a pot of simmering water. One by one, they gently floated to the water’s surface. After a couple of minutes simmering on the surface, Tom removed them to a pan of warm pesto sauce he’d made from last year’s frozen pesto. Along with the gnocchi, we ate fresh asparagus and radishes from the garden.
We just finished eating it about 45 minutes ago. Late, to be sure. But who cares? We are just grateful to have lives that allow us the luxury of being rushed by ricotta.
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