2 large russet potatoes
1 large egg beaten
1-2 cups flour
salt
I had never even heard of gniocchi until I started dating drew a few years ago. His mom is a 2nd generation Italian and his grandfather who I was lucky enough to spend a good amount of time with was a first generation Marengo. He loved his wine and his gniocchi. Any time we go to an Italian restaurant drew’s mom looks for gniocchi and orders it in her family’s honor. A couple years ago, shortly after grandpa Marengo passed away, we thought we should try it, thinking it can’t be that hard. Well, it didn’t turn out great. It wasn’t a disaster, but it was sticky and not exactly what we hoped for. Turns out, it’ snot that hard, it’s just tricky and once you figure it out, it’s pretty simple and fun to make.
Here’s the deal with gnocchi – you have to remove all of the moisture from the potatoes to avoid sticky tacky gnocchi dough… therefore, you must use russet potatoes (Idaho potatoes) because of their low moisture content. A lot of recipes boil the potatoes, but I have decided that baking them is best because a lot of the moisture is removed during the baking process. Poke the potatoes so that moisture may escape and bake for 45 minutes at 400 (until fork pierces easily). Remove the potatoes from the oven, slice them open and let them steam for 10 minutes. Then scoop out the innards and run through a food mill or potato ricer into a big bowl. You can also use a grater and actually grate the potatoes which gives a good texture and releases a lot of steam as well.
Next, spread the grated potatoes out and let the potatoes finish steaming for another 20 minutes or so. Let all that moisture get out of them! Carve out a little hole in the middle of the potato mound and drizzle the beaten egg in. Put the potatoes in one bowl and the flour in a separate bowl.
Start sprinkling the flour across the stop and incorporate the flour into the potatoes – I use a bamboo spatula for this. You don’t have to use all the flour, you want to keep adding the flour gradually until the dough is like playdough – light and easily kneadable, but not sticky.
Don’t add too much flour or the dough will be dense and tacky! You want it to be dry-ish and easily knead-able.
Once dough is a good consistency, cut it into eighths and roll out into logs about the thickness of your thumb, then cut the pieces into little nuggets.
Roll the nuggets down the gnocchi board for the classic gnocchi lines (rolling it down a fork works here too). Use a light but firm touch.. you’ll know when you do it and you’ll get the perfect little ridges. Keep practicing.
Now boil some water, throw in the gniocchi (about 20 at a time) and when they’re done they’ll pop up to the top. Use a slotted spoon to fish them out and put them on a platter until the rest are all done.
You can eat them freshly boiled with sauce of your choice. I like to sauté them in olive oil and the add a bunch of veggies and a sauce.
My favorite sauce is a roasted red pepper sauce. Throw red peppers on the grill until completely charred and black.
Then put the charred peppers in a ziplock bag and let them sweat for 10 minutes. The black charred skin will come off easily.
Make a basic tomato sauce (garlic, onion, tomato puree…recipe another day). Run the roasted red pepper through the food processor and add to the tomato puree.
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