Fun with Gnocchi

A few weeks ago while shopping I went to pick up a package of pre-made gnocchi. The boy made me put it back claiming he wanted to make some instead. I laughed at him, "Do you have any idea what's involved in making it?"

"No, but how hard could it be?"

The plan was to make is Thursday night, but Thursday after looking up recipes the boy sent me a text, "I don't think I can do this tonight. This may be a weekend dish." The weekend arrived and we got started by baking 2 1/2 pounds of potatoes (which is really only 2 potatoes, but listing it in pounds makes it sound like more). After they were baked we peeled the skins off of them, so far so good. But the next step was to mash them to get rid of all the lumps. The preferred way of doing so is with a ricer, except we didn't have one. Instead the boy micromanaged my mashing small bits with a fork. But eventually (after maybe an hour or so) they were mashed, and the boy formed a dough with flour, egg, and maybe oil? (I don't have the recipe, but I'm sure if you search you can find one.)
He rolled the dough out into snakes
Sliced them into dumplings
and formed ridges on top
These were probably made a little too big, since when they were boiled wound up growing quite a bit and were no longer bite sized.
The boy made a sauce with roasted red pepper & garlic sausage, a little butter and brandy.
And voila, we have gnocchi!
This is actually not the presentation shot the boy wanted me share. But I still haven't replaced the battery for my flash, and the beautifully plated meal turned out blurry, and not really sharable. So shh... don't tell him!

As for the gnocchi itself, it wound up tasting really good. It still was soft and pillow-y even without the ricer. And while it did turn out delicious, this is probably the one and only time we'll he'll make gnocchi without a ricer. But at least we know now to definitely make sure there's a ricer on our registry!

Have you ever made gnocchi? Did you use a ricer, or a different more creative method?