the gnocchi files

I love gnocchi in the same way I love chile relleno.  Which means, most of the time, I don't love it at all.  Once you have a superb, ethereal, perfectly cooked and sauced one,  you will endure hundreds of clunky, leaden and poorly made examples in search of that next perfect specimen.  I haven't had a good gnocchi for some time, and that got me mulling over my options for making them at home.  There are many versions of gnocchi, but the most common is the potato gnocchi, so I started there.  Tradtional recipes call for potatoes boiled until tender, but not falling apart, eggs, salt, nutmeg (usually), a little pepper, and flour.  The idea is to incorporate just enough flour into the potato mixture to create a dough, but not so much as to create a leaden little lump.  My experiments years ago lead me to a recipe that said that gnocchi made with eggs would never be light.  To bake the potatoes to reduce the overall moisture (that made sense -- more moisture=more flour) and add only salt and as much flour as necessary.  Well, I did that, and I had problems with the little dumplings absorbing too much water and coming apart.

Marcella Hazan says that eggs make for heavy gnocchi as well, and since she is the godmother of Italian cooking, I paid attention.  Then, while googling around a bit, I came upon a Tyler Florence recipe that added just one egg white to his recipe, and also added a half a teaspoon of baking powder.  Intriguing!  I'm sure that baking powder -- even such a small amount, would be sheer heresy in an Italian kitchen, but I am all about the best results, and I certainly don't mind turning a recipe on its ear, if it means I might get something all together better.

Just out of a quest for airiness, I even whipped that egg white to soft peaks before incorporating it, but I imagine that the dough is handled too much for the air in the egg to be retained.

baked potatoes are pressed through

a potato ricer while still hot

If the potatoes are riced while still hot, they will give off additional moisture in the form of steam.  To three baking potatoes, I added a half a teaspoon of baking powder, a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of freshly ground white pepper, half a teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg, and half a cup of flour.  Once I had combined that mixture, I fold in the egg white beaten to soft peaks, and began incorporating more flour.  I added another cup, for a total of a cup and a half.

The reaction of the baking powder in the dough was obvious -- it was soft, and pliable, with tiny pockets of air.  So far, so good.

the soft dough is rolled into ropes, cut into little rectangles,

then rolled across the tines of a fork, and rested on a floured tray

You can simply cut the dough into squares, but the step of rolling each little dumpling over the tines of a fork creates ridges, which makes little grooves for the sauce to cling to.  

three large potatoes made a lot of gnocchi, 

so I froze half of them for later use by freezing them 

right on the tray, then bagging them

To test the gnocchi for lightness and their ability to stay together (enough flour) I cooked a couple of them in a little pan of simmering water.  Gnocchi are cooked in water just at a simmer -- a hard boil would increase the risk of the gnocchi breaking apart.  After a couple of minutes, the gnocchi floated to the surface of the water, just as they are supposed to.  I let them simmer a few seconds more, then lifted them out of the water and drained them.  Verdict?  Impossibly light little morsels of potato dumpling.  However, I could detect a slightly metallic tang from the baking powder in the background.  But, I thought that with a flavorful sauce that would probably disappear, at least to my pallet.

Because the first time I had really well-made gnocchi, they were sauced in a three cheese sauce, I decided to replicate that with a sauce made of cream, fresh tarragon, nutmeg, and little salt and white pepper simmered together for a minute.  To that, I added a bit of Maytag blue, marscapone, and parmesan.  The result was a rich, flavorful sauce that masked the background flavor of the baking powder completely.  Though it was a bit rich -- too rich for a main course.  Served as a side to a grilled steak and some sauteed veggies, it was delicious.

little pillows of creamy goodness, garnished with

a little shaved parmesan

I have a little of the lobster sauce from mom's birthday left over in the freezer.  I think that will pair perfectly with those frozen gnocchi for a quick and elegant Friday night supper.

And so begins the gnocchi experiment.  Next up, some time in the next week, is to try my hand at the less traditional spinach and ricotta gnocchi.  Over the next month or so, I will work my way through a few different varieties of gnocchi, just to see what we prefer.