This must be the season for gnocchi! I offered a Cajun dinner for a silent auction a year ago, but when the payoff came in late January, it had become an Italian feast. The hosts and I had enjoyed fairly recent trips to Italy, and our host mentioned her love for the gnocchi there. I had not ever made it, but did some quick study.
There appear to be two camps on gnocchi: make a fairly conventional dough, with plenty of flour (see Kathie's below), or make a dough that has only enough dough in it to hold it together. I decided to try the latter. The result is a very different process than Kath describes below (I'm sure hers are great; here's a different product.)
I altered a Bon Appetit recipe, made a cream sauce, made them for the first time for my paid dinner for 12. They were the hit of the party. As one guest said, "They melt in your mouth!" I made them again for a friend's birthday a couple of weeks ago, and daughter Madina requested them for her birthday dinner yesterday.
I started with 6 medium Yukon Gold potatoes. Wash, stick with a fork, and microwave for 8-10 minutes until they are done.
As soon as they are cool enough to handle, peel and rice them one at a time. (There is a school of thought that it helps the end product to work with hot potatoes.) As I have no ricer or food mill, I forced these through my sieve with the back of a wooden spoon. This is HARD work, but I like the texture. This will yield about 6 cups of potatoes. To this, add:
1 whole egg and one yolk, beaten
1 tsp of coarse salt
1/2 tsp or so of fresh ground nutmeg
Mix that well, then add 1 cup of all purpose flour, continuing to add flour until this becomes a dough. This should not take 2 cups total. Move to a well floured board and knead in additional flour just until this is firm enough to work with. I doubt there is 3 cups total flour.
I cut the dough into 12 equal parts, and gently rolled each on the floured surface into a long rope 3/4 of an inch in diameter. Because the dough is soft, be careful here. I discovered that by just maintaining contact with the rope, and spreading my fingers as I rolled, I got just the right results. If your work surface is not as wide as mine (24x18), you may have to start with smaller pieces of dough as the rope gets long quickly.
Cut the dough rope into 3/4 inch pieces. When they are all cut, roll them on the back of a fork to make the indentations. This would be very hard to explain, in text, how to do. I suggest searching youtube; you'll find a couple of videos there that will make sense.
Cook in a large pot of rapidly boiling water in 5-6 batches. Wait until they float, and then perhaps 10-15 seconds more. Remove to your skillet of already prepared sauce. I have not tried to find a method to freeze these. They are VERY delicate, however, and do not fare well piled on top of each other in a bowl.
But, turned in they right sauce (see my Spinach Cream sauce above), these truly are to die for.
1 comment:
On the flour: because I used very large sweet potatoes/potatoes and 4-5 c flour, and you used 6 medium yukon golds and 3 c flour, the resulting mix of flour/potato was probably similar. My dough was also somewhat soft, slightly sticky.
While I have mastered making the indentations with the fork, if I am making these for just the 2 of us, I might not bother. It significantly adds to the prep time vs just cutting them like small noodles.
I have made my gnocchi with both microwaved and baked potatoes. The baked adds a sweetness and is worth the extra time (plan ahead).
I have both a ricer and a food mill--the food mill is great for making tomato sauce. Actually, I had a ricer at the Utah condo which ended up with Nathaniel and I doubt that he is moving it so Spain......
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