Cooking: Gnocchi
12th November, 2009
Gnocchi has long been one of my favourites, and Jon has loved it ever since he tried it, numerous times at numerous restaurants, during his visit to Perth years ago. You can get some pretty good pre-made Gnocchi from TJ’s and such, but you can’t beat the fluffy lightness you get when it’s freshly hand-made.
It’s pretty easy too. We boil a couple of potatoes in their skins. Some people bake them instead to keep them dry, but we haven’t had any problems with boiling. Just put them in the water from cold and get them out of the water as soon as you can easily stick a fork in without feeling that gritty apple-like kind of texture (you can keep the water for later too if you like).
Pull the skin off the potatoes and mush them through a ricer (you can mash them, but the ricer ensures there are no lumps and gets things fluffy).
Spread the potato in a bowl, make sure it’s not so hot that it will cook an egg, get an egg, crack it and drop it in the bowl. Fold the egg in plus about 3/4 cup of all-purpose flour – gently (to keep the mix light and fluffy) with your hands or a wooden spoon. Jon has been adding Parmesan at this stage too, which has turned out nice, but optional.
When the mix is consistent, remove it from the bowl and gently knead in up to an extra 1/4 cup of flour – stop adding flour as soon as the mix looses its tackiness.
Pinch off handfuls from the mix, roll them out into snakes and chop them into little lumps. You can see how big we make ours from our unfancy photos. Traditionally you press a fork into the Gnocchi, to help them hold sauce, but we don’t touch ours. We’re for minimal handling.
Bring your water to boil, place your Gnocchi in and wait for them to start floating to the surface (that means they’re done). Scoop them out as they do and collect them in a strainer.
You can then treat them as you prefer. The absolute best finish we’ve given them is Jon’s Alfredo sauce, which is pretty much the sauce from this recipe. Which gives you this loveliness.
We have also given them a sage brown butter sauté for something different. It was nice, but you lose that awesome fluffiness. So try this one after you’ve perfected the above perhaps.
