Gnocchi di Patate from Baked Potato

The wobble & the skewer: testing a bake 135 recipes

• Tested at the true centre and the thickest point, not at the convenient edge: the edge is done long before the answer is.
• The skewer comes out as the recipe describes, clean and dry or carrying the stated moist crumb, and it does the same on a second test in a different spot.
• The wobble is read in motion: nudged, the centre moves as one set mass with a faint tremble, rather than a liquid ripple travelling across the surface.
• The other signs agree with the test: risen and just shrinking from the sides, the top set and dry to a light touch with no wet gloss on it.
• Pressed lightly at the middle it springs back and leaves no lasting dent.

Where it goes wrong It was judged on the clock and on how the edges looked, so a centre still liquid went to the rack and sank as it cooled, a dense wet seam under a perfectly browned top.

The bare simmer: holding liquid below the boil 183 recipes

• The surface is read rather than assumed: bubbles break slowly in one or two places, or the surface merely shivers, and it does not reach a rolling boil at any point.
• It was held there: the pot was watched and the heat adjusted rather than set once and left, and there is no tide mark up the pot wall from a boil-over.
• The liquid stayed as clear as it should be: no clouding from agitation, and no fat churned into an emulsion through it.
• Whatever is in the liquid is still intact: nothing shredded, broken up, or worried apart by movement.
• The level is roughly where the elapsed time should have left it; a large drop is the evidence that it ran hotter than this while nobody was looking.

Where it goes wrong It was brought to a boil and then left on the same heat, so it churned for the whole cook: the liquid clouded, the fat emulsified into it, and the solids broke apart into the broth.