gnocchi... or not

In the interest of balance, I thought I should write about our culinary experiment of last weekend.  It was nothing very inventive; my husband has been talking about making our own gnocchi for some time now, so we thought we'd try it.  The last few times we've eaten out, there has been gnocchi of some description on the table; Oliver seems to love it.  We frequently make our own delicious pasta, so how hard could it be to make gnocchi at home?

Everything seemed to go to plan; it wasn't a difficult recipe, but the end result wasn't a success.  Even tossing the cooked gnocchi in olive oil, crispy bacon, pine nuts, spinach and parmesan (surely failsafe) couldn't disguise what tasted like textureless, waterlogged, mashed potato balls although amazingly, the dish seemed to be a hit with Ollie!

I don't know what we did wrong but I imagine it had something to do with the potatoes we used (which we've used many times for making delicious mashed potato).  A bit of a disaster but at least we all got to eat the delectable crispy baked potato skins.