I live a long way from downtown right now. So inviting friends to my house is something I do carefully. How long will it take them to get here? Will it be worth their trip? Can they even catch a bus home before the bus lines stop service the night?
Most of those issues are solved when I decide to make something delicious. No one minds coming an hour out of their way for an amazing meal. But you have to deliver For this meal I actually invited a friend to my house and then put him to work for three hours before a late dinner. Neither of us minded, though, as this…this was perfection. I’ve tried a lot of gnocchi recipes. I even have a pasta maker with a gnocchi pasta die (that kneads and shapes the pasta for you), and no, I didn’t make this after being inspired by the Montreal Gazette story of the man from Buonanotte who comes in every day just to make gnocchi for lunch there. He sounds lovely, but these are not his gnocchi.
These come from the New York Times Cookbook edited by Amanda Hesser. It’s s tomb of a cookbook that compiles the best recipes of the history of the New York Times publication (they’ve only had a recipe column for less than a century, though the paper itself has a much longer history). Imagine all the pasta recipes that newspaper has published…it’s astronomical. And here in my hands I have the best gnocchi recipe ever.
Was it the best? Yes. Was it hard? No. Can you do it? Yes. Does it take a long time? 3 hours start to finish. You need to be devoted to pillows of dough to undertake it, but yes you should do it. Skip a long-cooking tomato sauce and keep it simple with something that won’t mask the flavour of the potato pasta such as a simple olive oil and Parmesan or Pecorino Romano on top or a fast food-processed or blended pesto. No need for more cooking after you’ve finished shaping these squishy numbers. And you don’t even knead them. You don’t have to be a dough expert to get these right. You just need to follow instructions. Very well.
5 pounds baking potatoes, (10-12, uniform sized), scrubbed
3 lage egg yolks, lightly beaten
salt and freshly ground pepper (white pepper if you’re anal retentive about the colour of the gnocchi)
1 1/2 cups white flour or chickpea flour (or more depending on humidity. The chickpea flour is CRAZY delicious and nutty and works so well with nutty pesto, but the regular flour has a better fluffy, pillowy texture. That could also, however, be based on my friend’s better gnocchi-making skills than mine, as he did that batch.)
8 cups ice cubes (or a whole lot of changes of cold, cold water)
Instructions (Are you paying attention? Have you read these through before starting in on the gnocchi-making process? You should start these 1 day before you want to eat gnocchi):
1. Bake the potatoes by placing them whole in a pre-heated 350 degree oven. (The original recipe says to place them on a 1-inch layer of kosher salt on a jellyroll pan but that’s absolutely ridiculous. You should, however, bake them and not boil them, as you want to keep out as much liquid as possible). Bake the potatoes for 1 1/2 hours.
2. Take out the potatoes and cut them in half. Score the flesh in a lattice pattern with a knife and let the heat and moisture evaporate out of the cooling potatoes on a rack. (This keeps you from adding extra flour later).
3. At least 30 minutes later, when the potatoes are cool, peel them, mash them (you’re supposed to put them through a rice, but mashing well is okay), and weigh them. See? This got complicated. You actually need to weigh these things. Buonanotte’s gnocchi maker might scoff at this, but we don’t all have a million years of experience like him. You need 2 1/4 pounds of potato.
4. Leave in the fridge overnight to dry out. You CAN skip this step, but if you mussed around with boiling the potatoes above or not cutting them open and letting them dry out, I highly recommend it and will not be responsible for chewy gnocchi.
5. 1 to 1 1/2 hours from gnocchi-eating time (depending on your speediness with pesto and folding dough) spread the potato on a clean, floured work surface It should form a fairly flat mound. Drizzle it with the egg yolks and pepper and take a pastry scraper or cleaver (or other large, flat knife. I actually have a cleaver. How cool is that?) and cut into the potato at 1-inch intervals. Keep doing this as you sprinkle flour over top. Then fold the potato over itself and cut some more. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Flour, cut, fold, flour, cut, fold. Until the potato mixture feels pretty dry and isn’t sticky, and a small piece can be easily rolled into a ball, not a potato mushy non-geometrical shape. You may not need all the flour, or you may need more.
(the photo above is for motivation. You may need it at this point)
6. Get out some long sheets of parchment paper and put them on some baking sheets. Dust them with flour. Take your potato/flour mixture, lift it up so you can scrape underneath and kind of clean the counter, and put down a thin layer of flour. Then put the potato mixture back on top and shape it into a loaf that’s about 12 inches long and 1 1/2 inches high.
7. Cut a 1 1/2 -inch wide slice from the loaf (like banana bread, I guess?) and roll it out like a very thick single noodle (about 30 inches long!). Then cut it at 1-inch intervals (too thick and you’ll end up with un-cooked gnocchi dough, and too thin and you’ll probably end up with too thin gnocchi, but do what looks like gnocchi-sized pieces). Smooth the ends of the gnocchi if you really want to to, and place each piece on the parchment-lines baking sheets.
8. T-20 minutes. Bring a big pot of salted water to a boil (about 2 tbsp for a very large pot of water. Notice that there’s no salt in the gnocchi themselves. Apparently it traps water and weighs them down. And feathery gnocchi should float). Put your ice cubes in a large bowl and fill with cold water. Then put a colander in the ice bowl. It should fill with water. You now have a gnocchi-dunking station. If this instruction doesn’t work for you, just have a colander ready and a big bowl of cold water handy.
9. When the water on the stove comes to a boil add the gnocchi (do this in batches – maybe 3 or 4?) and let cook just 1 1/2 minutes, or until the little pillows start floating to the surface. Strain them off with a slotted spoon and toss them (gently) into the colander in the cold water. Let them sit there, not dryng out, while you do the next batch. Or place them directly into your large bowl of cold water while you do the next batch.You don’t want to leave them soaking the water too, too long, though, so just before the second batch is ready remove the gnocchi from the water and place on clean parchment paper-lined baking sheets.
10. When all your gnocchi are done pour them into the colander or raise them out of the water and combine with a sauce or pesto
. If your sauce is not hot, reheat the gnocchi VERY briefly in the boiling water. As in 10 seconds briefly. If they dry out because you left them in the open air too long, loosen them up by adding a little of the gnocchi boiling liquid to them in a large bowl.
Tarragon-Pistachio Pesto
I made this from what I had – tarragon and pistachios. You need nuts or seeds of some kind (pine nuts are expensive!!) and a flavourful oil and a flavorful herb. Basil, maybe sage, parsley, even chives, cilantro or shiso leaf for something VERY strong, etc. A good olive oil, walnut oil, hazelnut oil, etc.
1 handful of tarragon leaves
1/4 cup shelled pistachios
2 tbsp walnut oil (plus more to serve, as desired)
3/4 tsp salt
Instructions:
1. Combine in blender or mini-food processor. Process. Mix with gnocchi.
2. Smile.
Basil-Hemp-Walnut Pesto
Same story as above…
1 handful basil leaves
3 tbsp hemp seeds
2 tbsp olive oil (plus more to serve, as desired)
3/4 tsp salt
Instructions:
1. Combine in blender or mini-food processor. Process. Mix with gnocchi.
2. Smile.
I don’t toast these nuts since they’re not the kind of nuts you toast (that’s more hazelnuts, walnuts, pine nuts, and pecans…basically anything but these, so if you make it with those, you can try toasting them in a dry skillet over medium heat for a few minutes until they’re aromatic).
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