Gnocchi

 

Since my friend Chelsea got me a food mill (thank you!) and I'd been wanted to try out the gnocchi board again, I made Jamie a special gnocchi dinner last night. (We're not taking our honeymoon until after Christmas, so I wanted this week to have some special dinners.) The gnocchi was super fluffy and nice and the gnocchi board made them look so professional. The food mill also makes nice, uniformly ground up potatoes for the dough. Be sure to cool the ground up potatoes thoroughly before adding the flour for light gnocchi. I altered the recipe a bit from these very fancy gnocchi I made for New Year's.

A few more wedding presents in this pic! And some flowers from the wedding in the back

Serves 2-4
Ingredients:
2 potatoes (I used Russet, but Yukon Gold are good too, or a mix), skin on
1 egg
About 3/4 cups flour
Pinch of salt
1/2 cup cream
1 crushed garlic clove
1/2 cup grated pecorino romano
salt and lots of freshly grated pepper

Directions:
Put the potatoes in a pot of well salted water. Bring to a boil and cook until very tender - a fork should easily go in and out of the middle of the potato - about 45 minutes. Immediately peel the potatoes. You can hold the potato in one hand with a dish cloth to avoid burning yourself, and peel with a paring knife. The skin will slide right off.

Roughly chop the potatoes and put them through the food mill. (Or mash with a masher or put through a ricer, just try not to compress them too much.)

Spread out the processed potato on a baking sheet and put into the refrigerator to cool. Bring a pot of heavily salted water to a boil.

Once completely cool, put onto a floured surface and sprinkle with the flour. Fluff the flour in with your fingers. Make a little well in the middle and crack the egg into the well and add the salt. Whisk the egg until smooth, then combine the dough with your hands.

Knead the dough until it is uniform and slightly sticky. Flour the baking sheet.
Cut it into four pieces. Roll the first piece into a snake about 3/4" wide.

Then cut the snake into 1" pieces and roll them against the gnocchi board using your thumb.

(If you don't have a gnocchi board, you can use the back of a fork.) Place the gnocchi on the floured baking sheet and continue with the other pieces.

Meanwhile, heat the cream with the garlic clove in a skillet. Add the gnocchi to the boiling water, one by one, and don't overcrowd the pot - there should be lots of water. As they float up to the top, use a skimmer or spider to take them out and add them right into the skillet with the cream. Once all the gnocchi are added, add a little pasta water to the skillet with the pecorini and stir for about a minute until the cheese is all melted. Add black pepper and salt to taste and remove the garlic clove. Serve.