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Light as air these pea and ricotta gnocchi are easy to make. I finish them with bacon and mint so the flavors are full and diverse, making the airy texture all the more exciting. After a week of cooking my mother's recipes followed by a cocktail that took me a couple of days to recover from, I am happy to say I am back in the kitchen cooking my own stuff.

I say my own because I did not follow a recipe here. Instead I applied what I learned from my Tyler Florence cooking experience last month and adapted the process for this version of gnocchi. The notes I took during both excercises became the recipe you see here. I am particularly proud of this recipe. I also like the photo very much.

That's because I spent the weekend honing my blogging skills at CampBlogaway. This photo represents a few new food styling tricks I picked up from Denise Vivaldo. Most importantly I learned the importance of treating my garnishes with as much love and precision as I do the stars of the plate. Garnishes can also be used to artfully hide small flaws and even help guide your eye through the frame. Not that there are any small flaws on this plate... or at least any you can see! If you want to pick up some of these tricks yourself you can because Denise has a book on the art of food styling coming soon called The Food Stylists Handbook. You can pre-order it by CLICKING here. I plan to.

But first let's talk gnocchi. As close as I can figure gnocchi (pronounced nee-O-key) means "little lumps". One look at a proper gnocchi and you can see why. But they did not call them little potato lumps so I figure there is room for extemporizing. Which means in my opinion there is no reason to strictly limit myself little lumps of potato, semolina or even ricotta dough.

And beyond that, it seems there are two schools of thought on gnocchi. They can be chewy or they can be pillowy. In my opinion they both have their place on my plate. Traditionally the chewier varieties are potato based. The dough is drier and easy to roll out. Their light as air cousins often start out life as ricotta. They are more difficult to handle. But handled well they reward you with little pillows of luscious texture.

And while the little-lump concept lends itself to improvisation,  the actual shaping of the potato gnocchi is a precise craft. Marcella Hazan has a wonderful method and warns us that despite the name "gnocchi should be anything but lumpish"... I don't know, maybe etymolgy is not her strong suit...

But I do like her process for molding the perfect gnocchi. But keep in mind that she is discussing the doughier (usually potato) style of gnocchi. She directs us to divide the dough into several parts depending on how much dough you made, your goal is baseball sized. Each part should be rolled out into one-inch thick ropes and sliced into 3/4 of an inch long "lumps" There's that word again!

Now comes the critical part: "Take a dinner fork with long, slim tines, rounded if possible," she writes. "Working over a counter, hold the fork more or less parallel to the counter, with the concave side facing you. With the index finger of your other hand, hold one of the cut pieces against the inside curve of the fork, just below the tips of the prongs. At the same time that you are pressing the piece against the prongs, flip it away from the tips and in the direction of the handle. The motion of the finger is flipping, not dragging. As the piece rolls away from the prongs, let it drop to the counter. If you are doing it correctly, it will have ridges on one side formed by the tines and a depression on the other formed by your fingertip."

Now all this is great advice and when followed precisely you will indeed attain perfect gnocchi. But the amount of flour and the working of the dough creates tougher glutens that are indeed a bit chewy in the end. And there is nothing wrong with that. Because potato gnocchi are usually boiled and served with rich sauces like pesto, sage butter, Gorgonzola or a butter-enriched tomato sauce.

But ricotta-based gnocchi dough is much lighter. It should not be worked too much because you will lose the pillowy texture you are looking for. The very best way to form the dumplings in this case is with a teaspoon or scoop. I personally prefer a small 1 1/2-inch cookie/ice-cream type scoop. The result is a more free-form ball of gnocchi, but the texture will be light and lovely.

Pea Gnocchi with Bacon & Mint serves 8 as a first course CLICK here for a printable recipe