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Gnocchi of Potato
Take six medium-sized potatoes and put them on to boil in their skins. When they are done, peel them and pass them through a fine colander. Add a little salt. Take one cup of flour, and mix on the bread-board with the potatoes until they form a paste. Roll this paste with the hands into a sausage about the thickness of three fingers. Cut this roll across into pieces about an inch long. Press these pieces lightly with the finger or the handle of the knife, so they will take little cup-shaped forms. Leave these to one side, and put two quarts of salted water on to boil. When it boils add the gnocchi a few at a time, until all are in the water. When the gnocchi rise to the surface of the water, take them out with the skimmer. Put them into a platter a few at a time, adding each time gravy and cheese, and covering them well. Put a layer of grated cheese sprinkled on top. Serve with meat, or as a first course.
A sound, complete gnocchi recipe that assumes more knowledge than it states. The proportions and handling are where it needs annotation.
- Potato choice and moistureSix medium potatoes is roughly 2 lb / 900 g. Use a floury baking potato rather than a waxy one, and boil them in their skins as directed so they take up as little water as possible — wet potatoes force in extra flour and give heavy gnocchi.
- "Pass through a fine colander"This is a potato ricer or food mill in modern terms. Do it while the potatoes are still hot, and never use a food processor, which develops the starch into glue.
- One cup of flour is a starting pointA cup is about 4.5 oz / 130 g of all-purpose flour. Depending on how dry the potatoes are you may need slightly more or slightly less; stop as soon as the dough holds together and stops sticking badly. Overworking and over-flouring are the two ways this dish fails.
- Shaping"The thickness of three fingers" is somewhere around two inches; ropes half that are easier to handle. The pressing with a finger or knife handle makes a hollow that catches sauce — a fork or gnocchi board gives ridges to the same purpose.
- Cooking timeThe recipe's cue is the right one: they are done seconds after they float, roughly 1½ to 3 minutes. Leaving them in the pot after they surface waterlogs them.
- "Gravy"Here gravy is almost certainly sugo — meat juices or a meat-and-tomato sauce, not a flour-thickened English gravy. The cheese is unspecified; grated Parmesan is the likeliest intention.
- Assembling in layersAdding sauce and cheese to each batch as it comes out of the pot, rather than dumping everything together at the end, keeps the gnocchi from fusing into a mass. Work quickly and serve immediately.
- YieldEnough for four as a first course, or two to three as a main with a substantial sauce.
Potato gnocchi are the newest branch of a very old family: gnocchi in Italy long predated the potato and were made from bread, semolina, chestnut or wheat flour, sometimes bound with cheese. The potato versions spread through northern and central Italy in the nineteenth century, once the potato had shifted from famine crop to everyday staple, and by 1900 they were common enough to appear without explanation in domestic manuals. The name is generally traced to a word for a knot or a lump ". — an apit description of the shape.