I buy just about every local foodstuff I can get my hands on, but with every new product I try, my favorite remains the same: potatoes. Having local potatoes means a meal becomes a meal; a starch has the honor of joining the plate alongside meat and vegetables. Potatoes are just about the only starch I’ve found locally, and I include them in meals often. I usually cook them the same way–simply roasted, with a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkle of salt and pepper–but every once in a while i get the urge to do them justice.
Enter gnocchi.
For potatoes, gnocchi may well be the prom (god, that’s a horrible analogy, but i’m distracting watching King Corn as I write this, so humor me this once): a chance to get decked out and dressed up and transform from everyday to elegant. It’s the best way I can think of to honor the one local product I appreciate the most.
I tried making gnocchi last summer, and while it wasn’t a complete failure, it certainly wasn’t an effort I was proud of. This year, I was determined to do gnocchi right.
With gnocchi, texture is everything. It is an absolute must that each shape be pillowy and soft, yielding gently beneath a fork and luxuriously melting on the tongue. The texture of the final product depends on the condition of the dough, and I came across two great recipes that do great jobs of indicating what the dough should be like. Elise at simply recipes offers helpful photos along with a recipe, and Heidi over at 101 cookbooks includes excellent step-by-step descriptions with her gnocchi recipe. While I opted to follow a recipe in my copy of The Professional Chef, I relied both on the photos and descriptions as I went along.
I’m proud to say that this year’s effort came out much better, if not near perfect.
Here’s the ingredients, for
Whole Wheat Gnocchi with Fresh Tomato Basil Sauce:
Oops. there were eggs in there too, and butter. They didn’t make it into the photo. Here’s the dough–essentially cooked, mashed potatoes, flour, butter, and eggs–rolled out for cutting:
the cut gnocchi:
and the final product–whole wheat gnocchi with fresh tomato basil sauce:
and the meal–rustic and comforting:
