Potato Gnocchi Recipe

Potato gnocchi are one of the most popular Italian dishes in the world. They are suitable for all kinds of sauces and tradition dictates that they are one of the classic first dishes for Sundays and holidays. Roman tradition wants them on Thursdays, but for this speciality any day is good.

But why do we say Thursday gnocchi? Tradition has it that Fridays were dedicated in ancient times to penance and people ate fish and little else, so the day before, Thursday precisely, they prepared themselves to observe this tradition by eating a hearty dish, hence the old saying.

Gnocco is so called because it is made up of small portions of homogenous dough similar to knots in wood, probably derived from the Longobard term Hnohhil, which means a knot in wood.

Ingredients Gnocchi recipe for 4 people

• about 1 kg potatoes
• grams 300 of white flour type 0
• 1 egg
• 1 salt to taste

The potatoes

The choice of potatoes for gnocchi is important. The most recommended is the white potato because it is richer in starch and perhaps a little older because it has less water. And it is important that the potatoes are as dry as possible as this decreases the amount of flour we have to use, making our gnocchi softer.

Yes, because the secret to making our perfect gnocchi is the right balance between potatoes and flour. So too much flour tends to make our gnocchi harder, less flour on the other hand tends to make them flake when cooked.

Preparing the gnocchi

Now put the potatoes to cook in water with their skins on and boil them for about 25 to 30 minutes from when the water has started to boil.

They are left to cool for half an hour and then peeled and mashed in a potato masher. This mixture should be placed on a board and then worked by hand, adding a pinch of salt, the egg and the flour slowly until a soft, smooth and compact mixture is obtained. Do not knead the dough too much because it should not be very elastic.

Now form cylinders with the diameter of a finger out of the dough, which are then cut into 1.5/2 cm pieces. These are our gnocchi, which can be cooked like this or you can take them one by one and line them with a gnocchi ruler or fork.

They should be cooked in plenty of boiling salted water, turning them with a wooden spoon until they all rise to the surface. At this point, our gnocchi are ready for the sauce of your choice and eaten.

My favourite sauce for gnocchi is meat sauce, which I am not going to rewrite here, referring you to my article on lasagne where you will find the recipe for both the meat sauce I prepare and the original Bolognese sauce, which is the classic meat sauce. Instead, in this article I would like to propose many other ways of eating gnocchi, starting with a rather special recipe that I really enjoyed many years ago in a little restaurant by the sea.

Gnocchi with shrimps and coconut

Gnocchi are prepared in the usual way with the usual ingredients, only when it comes to cutting them, they are made smaller, about half the size of normal gnocchi. You can also find small, round gnocchi on the market that do their job very well, although I will never tire of repeating myself, what we make at home has another flavour.

Ingredients for 4 people

• 1.500 g dumplings
• grams 400 shelled shrimps
• grams 50 butter
• grams 100 whole milk
• 30/40 grams of dehydrated flaked coconut (can be found in supermarkets in cake additives)
• 1 packet of cooking cream
• a couple of tablespoons of ketchup
• salt, pepper to taste

Preparation:

Put the coconut in the milk to moisturise for five minutes, put the butter in a saucepan, melt it and add the milk with the coconut, cook for about 5 minutes, then the shrimps. Salt and pepper and cook for a further 5 minutes.

Add the cooking cream and ketchup and mix well, the sauce should be pink and quite liquid. Once the gnocchi are cooked, toss them in the pan with the sauce and serve at the table.

Roman-style potato dumplings

Another recipe that I really like is gnocchi alla romana, which can be considered the classic gnocchi known all over the world.

Ingredients:

for the gnocchi the usual ones I have already mentioned above.

for the meat sauce

• 400 g minced beef
• 1 onion, 1 carrot and 1 celery rib finely chopped for the sautéing
• grams 300 chopped peeled tomatoes
• a few basil leaves and a small tuft of parsley
• olive oil, salt and pepper to taste
• half a glass of red wine
• grated Parmesan cheese to taste.

Preparation:

sauté finely chopped onion, carrot and celery in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, add the chopped basil and parsley leaves. When the ingredients are golden brown, add the minced veal and let it cook, turning often, for about ten minutes.

Add salt and pepper and deglaze with red wine until it has been absorbed. Add the peeled tomatoes, cover and let the sauce cook for about 2 hours, stirring occasionally.

Close to cooking, bring a pot of salted water to the boil and cook the gnocchi you prepared earlier until they rise to the surface. Season with the meat sauce and a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese.

Gnocchi alla sorrentina

These gnocchi are the ultimate in Mediterranean cuisine of which they have all the characteristics. Tomatoes, mozzarella, parmesan cheese make this dish a real treat. Below is the recipe. For the gnocchi, the usual procedure and ingredients.

For the sauce you need

• 1 clove of garlic
• 5 or 6 basil leaves
• 700 g tomato puree, preferably rustic
• olive oil
• grams 250 of mozzarella
• grams 50 of grated Parmesan cheese

Procedure: In a pan, put 3 or 4 tablespoons of olive oil and the peeled and crushed garlic, which you remove as soon as it is golden. Add the tomato puree, fresh basil leaves, cover and cook for about 30 minutes.

At this point our sauce is ready, so cook the gnocchi that you prepared earlier, toss them with 3 quarters of the sauce, turning well. In an oven dish or baking tray, pour the remaining quarter of the sauce on the bottom and place a portion of the gnocchi already seasoned on top, on top put a layer of diced mozzarella and a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese.

Place the remaining gnocchi, another layer of mozzarella and parmesan on top. Place the baking tray in a preheated oven at 250 degrees in grill mode and cook for about 5 minutes. Remove from the oven and serve piping hot.

Other types of gnocchi

There are other types of gnocchi that are made with other ingredients, but are still very good. For example, ricotta gnocchi.

Instead of potatoes, cow's ricotta cheese is used. The result is delicate and tasty gnocchi, and to fully appreciate their flavour, seasoned with a very simple tomato sauce.

Ingredients for ricotta gnocchi

• 500 grams fresh ricotta
• 1 egg
• 1 generous spoonful of Parmesan cheese
• grams 300 of flour
• a pinch of salt

Preparation:

In a bowl mash the ricotta cheese with the egg the Parmesan cheese and a pinch of salt until everything is mixed, continue by putting in the flour a little at a time and working the dough with your hands to obtain a firm but soft consistency.

With a rolling pin, roll out the dough, which should remain about 2 centimetres high, cut the dough into strips and cut the strips again into cubes, and our ricotta dumplings are ready.

Our gnocchi are cooked in a pot of boiling water and after two to three minutes when they rise to the surface they are cooked. There are several ways to season them. A tomato and basil sauce, they are also delicious with pesto genovese and also with fish sauces.

One of my favourites is the sauce with sausage and peas.

Ingredients for 4 people

• 2 sausages, skinned and chopped
• 150 grams green peas
• 150 grams of cream

In a saucepan cook the crumbled sausage in a little olive oil, when browned add the peas, season with salt and pepper and after 5 minutes of cooking add the cream, which only needs to be mixed into the sauce. A tasty sauce is ready to season our ricotta dumplings.

Chestnut flourdumplings.

Quite an autumnal dish this one with chestnut flour gnocchi, but just as good and very easy to prepare.

Ingredients:

• grams 400 chestnut flour
• grams 275 00-type flour (in some recipes, water is partly replaced by milk)
• grams 300 of water

Knead the two flours that you have already mixed and sifted with the water, form a ball and refrigerate it for at least an hour. This will make it easier to work the dough, which you will then cut into strips and then into rectangles.

Our gnocchi are now ready to be cooked in plenty of salted water. For the sauce, many simply use butter and sage, precisely to enhance the flavour of the chestnut flour, but they are also delicious with more savoury sauces such as bacon and mushrooms.

A bit of gnocchi history

Let's talk about our classic potato gnocchi, which didn't arrive on our tables until after the discovery of the Americas by Christopher Columbus. Yes, because potatoes were imported from America.

There were already types of gnocchi but they were made with breadcrumbs, milk and almonds. More anciently, gnocchi are thought to have been the first type of pasta used by man, made from a mixture of flour and water, also using different types of flour, such as maize, spelt, wheat, etc.

They were cooked in water or simply fried, as is still used today in some Italian regions. It is also said that it was the famous Alessandro Volta, the inventor of the battery, who first brought potatoes, which he had met at the court of Louis XVI, to Italy. It is said that it was a mistake in the preparation of a mash that made him make the first potato gnocchi.

Gnocchi in the world

All over the world you can find foods that resemble our gnocchi. Both savoury and sweet. For example, in Asian countries, these are prepared with rice flour and steamed. In India, they are prepared with rice, lentil flour and after being wrapped in leaves steamed, but they are considered more of an accompaniment for more elaborate dishes than an end in themselves.

While it is in our continent of Europe and also in the Americas that they find their function as first courses, although in some countries there are typical preparations served as side dishes and also as soups. Truly curious are the many types of sweet dumplings, more for the preparations that accompany them.

Let me give you a few examples: in Nepal they are made with rice flour, filled with molasses and sesame and steamed, and also with flour and milk, fried and then heated in syrup. In India again with cheese and semolina always heated in syrup.

On the American continent, on the other hand, they prevail in preparations such as soups. For example, in Canada and the southern United States, dumplings are made from flour, which are then cooked in chicken soups. Or egg dumplings, which originated in Pennsylvania, but probably have Dutch origins that are cooked in corn or potato or chicken soups.

A type of Jewish dumpling is made of unleavened bread and chicken fat, then cooked in chicken broth. There are also Chilean dumplings made of maize flour that accompany many vegetable or meat soups.