Potato Gnocchi
When I think of gnocchi all I can think of are little pillows of deliciousness. I didn’t really appreciate them the way I should have until I learned the love and care put into making the “perfect” gnocchi.
The first time I made potato gnocchi I vividly remember my chef asking, “is your pasta water boiling yet?!” this is a crucial first step when making your gnocchi experience a success. This kind of pasta is one that you need to show just a little more tlc than you would any other fresh pasta. It takes gathering all the ingredients before hand, just the right amount of potatoes to flour, you can’t kneed it too much or too little, oh and be careful of working too slowly with the dough.
Now that we have that very intimidating introduction to gnocchi making out of the way, these little pillows of goodness will be absolutely worth all the tedious work. I like to keep my gnocchi parings very simple to emphasize the pasta itself. In the fall, I like to toss them in brown butter and fresh sage this makes for a warm and cozy combination. In the spring I keep it fresh with light vegetables such as green asparagus and a cream of some sort. Either way you go, there really isn’t a wrong way of eating gnocchi!
Gnocchi can be made of so much or than just plain potatoes, use this recipe as a base and simply add 1/2 cup of a puree of your choice. In the picture above I made a puree of carrots and added it to the recipe to create a carrot gnocchi. The possibilities are endless.
Prep Time: 30min Cook time: 45min
Yields: 4 servings
Ingredients:
2 cups of cooked and riced potato
1 cups of all purpose flour, plus more for dusting
1/4 cup of ground parmesan cheese
1/2 cup of ricotta cheese
3 egg yolks
salt and fresh black pepper to taste
Directions:
Start with peeling and cooking potatoes as you would when making mash potatoes.
Once potatoes are cooked, cool in your fridge or at room temperature.
Bring a pot of water that is heavily salted to a boil.
While you’re waiting for your water to boil, gather ingredients making sure to keep them separate.
On a clean table surface dust a pinch of flour to prevent dough from sticking. make a well with the cooked potatoes and place egg yolks in the center.
With a bench scrapper slowly break the egg yolks into the potatoes until the egg yolks are fully combined.
Now add both cheeses and the salt and pepper, combine with bench scrapper until fully incorporated into mixture.
In batches incorporated the flour using the scrapper to fold in and begin to form a dough, do not over mix! working the dough too much will result in tough and chewy pasta.
Once the dough is fully incorporated cut the dough into four parts, at this point you want to work at a faster pace.
cut 1/4 of the dough and begin stretching out into 1 inch thick logs, dust more flour on surface if needed.
Cut gnocchi into medium sized squares, repeat until all the dough is small gnocchi squares.
At this point you water should be boiling, throw in gnocchi and allow to cook thoroughly for about 2min or until they float to the top.
Once floating transfer to your favorite pasta sauce and enjoy!
*My favorite brown butter sauce
For a simple brown butter sauce, bring a sauté pan to a high heat. When the pan is almost smoking carefully throw in the butter and watch as it starts to brown. Once you begin to smell the butter browning add a few springs of sage and remove from the heat.
