Gnocchi

About a quarter past 11, husband called HELP.  He had decided to make farcis (but that is a recipe for another day) and things weren’t working out too well.  The potatoes especially didn’t want to be hollowed.  He set them aside in the food mill saying they can be mashed instead.  After the farcis were in the oven, I thought why not turn the potatoes into gnocchi?

This is a dish that doesn’t call for a lot of high tech material, you need a fork mainly.

You want to make some mashed potatoes that are rather dry, just the potatoes, no milk or butter.  Usually, if I were to start out to make this on purpose, I would steam the potatoes and then put them through the food mill (or ricer).  One kilo potatoes and then add 250 grams flour.  Today I just weighed what potatoes I had and put in ¼ of that weight in flour. I never tried doing this by volume, so I guess in addition to the fork, you need a scale… Mix the flour with the potatoes, trying not to overwork, then roll out in ropes and chop the ropes into bite-size pieces.

Now comes the ancestral gesture I learned from my mother-in-law.  Put each little piece on a fork and roll it sort of into and off of the fork at the same time.  You want to make like tire treads and have a hollow place in the middle, a combination of corkscrew and shell macaroni.

 

You’ll need a pot of boiling water or broth, salted.  Put the gnocchi in the boiling liquid and when they float , they’re done.  This only takes a couple of minutes.  One would usually make these to accompany a dish that has a lot of liquid, like a light stew, because they are handy to soak up the juices.  You could just serve with a bit of butter and cheese.