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rhythmaningYesterday, for the first time ever, I made gnocchi. This was quite exciting: something new. It was part of my “oh my god what will we do with all this chicken stock” experiment. It is quite curious that I wanted to make gnocchi, since generally I don’t like them. I first had gnocchi made by an ex-girlfriend (she was then, and she still is), and it looked like awfully hard work. But then I once had gnocchi in Venice, and they were heavenly. So I am kind of split on gnocchi.
I used a recipe from a book I was given a while ago on Italian food called “Bounissimo!”, and I also looked at a recipe in Arabella Boxers’ “Mediterranean Cookbook” – they were very similar.
Both recipes called for floury potatoes. Unfortunately, all the potatoes in the supermarket had names rather than descriptions, and none of my cookbooks had been able to direct me to a specific variety – I checked before I went shopping. (OK, I am sure that I could have found this kind of information online, but that didn’t occur to me until afterwards.)
So I got some plain ordinary un-varietal potatoes.
These I boiled, and then mashed. So far so good. Indeed, I went overboard in mashing them, leaving no lumps at all. (If you are counting, both recipes said use a pound of potatoes for two people, so I did.) Into the mashed potatoes I mixed one egg yolk, and then I mixed in 100g of flour.
The dough seemed very dry when I was mixing in the flour, so I added a little water; this wasn’t in the recipe, and may have been a mistake, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Then I rolled out the dough into cylinders about half an inch across, and cut them into inch lengths, and I shaped them with a fork to leave some grooves. At this point, the dough seemed overly damp (hence the water maybe being a mistake), but hey, it was too late to worry about. I stuck the shaped gnocchi into the fridge, and made the tomato sauce.
This was dead easy tomato sauce: a couple of shallots, a couple of cloves of garlic, sliced up and sautéed together. Then I added a tin of chopped tomatoes, a dash of wine, and some dried herbs (thyme and oregano are what came to hand), and let it simmer for a while.
I put half a litre of chicken stock on to heat in a saucepan, decided it wasn’t enough liquid, added half a litre of water, and brought it to boil. Then I dropped twenty of the gnocchi into to simmer. After four or five minutes, the gnocchi rose to the surface – just like the recipes said they would (it always surprises me when things happen exactly as the recipe says); I simmered them for a minute or so longer, then I fished them out and put the next batch on. Apparently, the gnocchi need to float free – hence limiting each batch to twenty or so.
I served them with the tomato sauce, fresh basil, fresh parsley and loads of grated parmesan. I was rather dubious of the gnocchi – they seemed quite doughy – but my wife said they were wonderful, superb, and the best she had tasted since we were last in Italy.
I did think the tomato sauce was excellent, though. Really, really good.
x-posted
I used a recipe from a book I was given a while ago on Italian food called “Bounissimo!”, and I also looked at a recipe in Arabella Boxers’ “Mediterranean Cookbook” – they were very similar.
Both recipes called for floury potatoes. Unfortunately, all the potatoes in the supermarket had names rather than descriptions, and none of my cookbooks had been able to direct me to a specific variety – I checked before I went shopping. (OK, I am sure that I could have found this kind of information online, but that didn’t occur to me until afterwards.)
So I got some plain ordinary un-varietal potatoes.
These I boiled, and then mashed. So far so good. Indeed, I went overboard in mashing them, leaving no lumps at all. (If you are counting, both recipes said use a pound of potatoes for two people, so I did.) Into the mashed potatoes I mixed one egg yolk, and then I mixed in 100g of flour.
The dough seemed very dry when I was mixing in the flour, so I added a little water; this wasn’t in the recipe, and may have been a mistake, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Then I rolled out the dough into cylinders about half an inch across, and cut them into inch lengths, and I shaped them with a fork to leave some grooves. At this point, the dough seemed overly damp (hence the water maybe being a mistake), but hey, it was too late to worry about. I stuck the shaped gnocchi into the fridge, and made the tomato sauce.
This was dead easy tomato sauce: a couple of shallots, a couple of cloves of garlic, sliced up and sautéed together. Then I added a tin of chopped tomatoes, a dash of wine, and some dried herbs (thyme and oregano are what came to hand), and let it simmer for a while.
I put half a litre of chicken stock on to heat in a saucepan, decided it wasn’t enough liquid, added half a litre of water, and brought it to boil. Then I dropped twenty of the gnocchi into to simmer. After four or five minutes, the gnocchi rose to the surface – just like the recipes said they would (it always surprises me when things happen exactly as the recipe says); I simmered them for a minute or so longer, then I fished them out and put the next batch on. Apparently, the gnocchi need to float free – hence limiting each batch to twenty or so.
I served them with the tomato sauce, fresh basil, fresh parsley and loads of grated parmesan. I was rather dubious of the gnocchi – they seemed quite doughy – but my wife said they were wonderful, superb, and the best she had tasted since we were last in Italy.
I did think the tomato sauce was excellent, though. Really, really good.
x-posted