I was at a dinner with friends and one of them asked me about the Gnocchi.
She tried to do this Italian dish, she was following a video recipe but it didn’t come out well, so I hope this post it will be useful for her and some other “international friends”.
It’s not a complicated recipe, but how I said to her, it takes a lot before to learn the perfect way to do it.
I remember how many time how I was in the kitchen with my mum, looking to her and helping her in the last process of shaping them. And still sometimes she is not satisfied from her gnocchi. (I am always satisfied when she prepare them) 🙂
When I was a kid, during sunday mornings, she used to prepare the ragù (bolognese sauce) and in the main time boiling the potatoes.
Then she let them cool down already mashed on the wood table, covered by a linen.
I tried to ask her, “how much flour do you add?” and the answer was…”I don’t know. It depends from the potatoes. So, how much the dough will take it”…
The recipe is simple: potatoes and flour..
But the “potato” this is the secret. The potato make the difference. It should be hard, not a new potato, and it should be the white potato (not the yellow that I used here).
How I said the problem is to give the right rapport between this two ingredients. The suggestion is add flour during the kneadding untill the dough will not be anymore umid and sticky.
N.B: This time I will not explain how to do the sauce (in this case bolognese sauce), but if you want to try to do this recipe, do not forget to prepare your sauce before starting to work on the gnocchi. You will not have time during the procedure. 😉
Gnocchi
Recipe and procedure:
800g di potato
300-400g flour (maybe more)
3 tsp salt
Boiled the potatoes. Until soft (check the biggest potato with a fork you should be able to rich easily the heart of it).
Peel and mash the potatoes on a table, add the salt. Cover with a linnen untill cool down completely.
Add half the flour and knead the dough. Continue to add flour during the kneading.
Add flour untill the dough it will be quite hard and dry, it should not stick on your hand anymore.
Roll it and cut it in big stripe (3 cm width)
Roll each piece in a long long sausage (about 1-1.5 cm diameter)
Put a couple of rolls close to each other and cut in pieces of 1 cm.
And cut, and cut, and cut…
And now the most important phase of this preparation: the shaping…
The gnocchi keep the sauce just because of the “grooved shape” so that´s why it is so important.
For shaping the gnocchi you will not need fancy tool, just a fork.
Put the fork over the top of a gnocco, slide down the fork with a gentle pressure, and let the gnocco to roll under the fork. (It is not easy to explain by word, I hope the pictures will help to hunderstand better).
In the mean time, boil salted water in a really big and large saucepan.
Don´t worry, do it and do it. The last gnocco it will be your best one.
When you’ll have done…spread all the gnocchi on the table and add a lot of flour so they are not goimg to stick to each other.
Divide the gnocchi in different batches of about 20-30 pieces.
Cook one batch at the time. Let the gnocchi slide down gently in the boiling water and stir really gently with a wood spoon for 2 seconds.
Wait untill the gnocchi will come up and take them out. Put them in a big large bowl already preapare with two or tree table spoon of sauce. Add other sauce and continue to all the batches.
