I'm afraid my cameras aren't really working well (of course it could be the photographer) so I stole a similar picture off the Internet. Ok, my gnocchi didn't look quite that good and I didn't put any great effort into the sauce, but still I thought it turned out quite well, but damn it took work. I remember watching Jeremy Neppl make gnocchi last spring at La Chiesa and he made it look so easy. Jeremy, if you're reading this, OMG!
Gnocchi (pronounced somewhat like neyah kee) is an Italian potato pasta. By the way, this is not a diet recipe! The gnocchi are rolled out on a little ridged board with your thumb. This allows the sauce to well in the thumb hole and catch in the outer ridges. Rolling the gnocchi out was the easiest part. It was milling or ricing the cooked potatoes that wore me out. However, I think a lot of my exhaustion is due to the cheap ass food mill I bought. Kneading the dough was fun. It was very sticky. I suspect I'll be washing potato dough off my fingers for about a week. Although I learned a tremendous amount from Jeremy, I used the recipe I found on page 56 in the September 2010 edition of Everyday Food. I didn't get Jeremy's recipe written down. I was too enthralled in watching the process.
The sauce I used was a sauce I make for homemade pizza. I just throw together onion, garlic, basil, oregano, and tomatoes in my food processor. For tonight's dish, I added a little olive oil and some salt and pepper. I heard somewhere that when you have homemade pasta, you should use less sauce, and think that held true for this evening.
I made the full recipe and froze 3/4 of it. And although I made two servings,and it was really good, but it was very filling. Half of it went into the fridge. I've heard that you can fry gnocchi. That excites me. I think I have to try it.
Although the gnocchi was easy to roll out, I did have problems with the size of my pastry mat and my counter. It says to divide the dough into 8 portions and to roll out. I should have divided it into 16. I had to reroll some of them to get them closer to the proper proportions.
By the way, my kitchen is a disaster area, and I'll have to clean it up pronto. Tomorrow my friend Ken is coming over for lunch and I'm trying something different. I'm going to grill split chicken breasts, but I've already poached them first, so I won't have to cook them so long that they'll dry out on the grill. I don't know why I keep subjecting Ken to these new things. He isn't fond of culinary experimentation.
The gnocchi recipe is as follows:
Ingredients
2.5 pounds russet potatoes (about 5 small) (I used my dad's home grown Kennebec potatoes)
coarse salt
1.75 cups of all-purpose flour plus more for dusting (a lot for dusting!!!)
1 large egg
Preparation
1. In a large pot, bring potatoes to a boil in salted water(I think Jeremy baked his); reduce to a rapid simmer and cook until potatoes are tender when pierced with a knife, 35 to 40 minutes. Lightly dust two parchment-lined rimmed baking sheets with flour; set aside. Drain potatoes and peel while still hot with a paring knife (use a think, dry kitchen towel or pot holder to hold them). Immediately pass potatoes through a ricer onto a work surface. Let cool completely.
2. Sprinkle potatoes with flour and 2 teaspoons salt, then top with egg. With your hands, work flour and egg into a dough.
3. Knead dough until smooth but not elastic, dusting with flour if it becomes too sticky, 4 minutes. Do not overwork dough.
4. Divide dough into 8 portions. Roll each portion into a rope (.5 inch thick and 24 inches long). Cut each rope into .5-inch pieces.
5. Gently roll each dough piece against the back of a fork to make ridges(I think the gnocchi board was a lot slicker and it only cost $5), then arrange in a single layer on prepared baking sheets.
6. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. In batches, add a few handfuls of gnocchi and cook until most have floated top, 2 minutes. With a wire mesh spider or a slotted spoon, transfer gnocchi immediately to the sauce.
Makes 8 servings. I'm not even going to bother with the calorie count etc.
