Gnocchi

The other day I had made pork loin (roasted with a homemade marinade of soy sauce, water, honey, ginger, and garlic...good stuff) and mashed potatoes. True to form, as I suffer from the Italian curse of "if there's not too much, there's not enough" I had about 4 C of mashed taters (for my southern constituents) leftover. So, I decided to make gnocchi. It had been a very long time, so I kind of had to wing it. Anyway, it turns out to be pretty simple, here's what I did:

4 C mashed potatoes
3 eggs
2 C AP flour
1 1/2 C semolina flour
pinch of salt

Mix. Depending on how moist/dry the potatoes are, this may vary a bit. I had the whole fam rolling the little dumplings. I just took a chunk of dough, rolled it into a snake and cut into little pieces. We laid them out on sheet pans with parchment paper and froze them. Then after threw them into a gallon ziplock.

I waited to finish this post since I was gong to cook a batch for dinner last night. Here's the verdict: The flavor was awesome, but they were a tiny bit dense, so to amend the recipe, stick with all AP flour. If at all possible use fresh mashed potatoes, not leftover. While the leftover are fine, the fresh will make it lighter. I alos do a ricotta gnocchi, which are lighter, but more on that later. 

I thawed some of the gnocchi, then boiled them in salted water and strained. I then put a little butter in a skillet and tossed the gnocchi, to give them a bit of a "crisping". I made a sauce out of beef stock, a very thin roux, garlic, rosemary, and thyme to top them off. I served with an italian chicken sausage (the wife's trying to have me cook healthier). Like I said, the flavors were great, but maybe a little less dense next time. So, mess around with it, and as always, experiment. I think I would make them a bit smaler next time, too...

prodotto finito-finished product

Buon Appetito!