making gnocchi

For whatever reason, I've thought about making gnocchi for quite awhile now. Last Wednesday I happened to buy a 5 lb bag of russet potatoes for 48 cents (simply because they were on sale for practically nothing). Then on Thursday the latest issue of Bon Appetit arrived in our mailbox with a potato gnocchi recipe. And on Friday I had no plans for dinner that evening plus a rather free day to make it. So all these things working together, I decided it must be time. I'd perused the gnocchi recipe in our Joy of Cooking book in the past when I first started having gnocchi-making visions, but decided to go with the Bon Appetit version instead.I don't know why but it always seemed to me to be one of those elusive and difficult foodie-sort of things to make (like the kind I had here)...but I found it was just the opposite, rather fun and sort of like playing with Play-Doh! You start by putting the potatoes in the oven to bake for an hour and walk away to do other things...easy enough.

Then you need to scoop out the flesh and put it through a potato ricer. I didn't have one but the Joy of Cooking book said you could also use a sieve as an alternative, which I found worked really well.

Spread out and cool a bit to room temp.

Next, you mix the potatoes with flour and add in 1 egg, salt, & nutmeg.

Knead and form into a ball. This dough felt so wonderful and was easy to work with.

Divide the ball into quarters. Roll out and chop up!

Then I placed all my little gnocchi gems on a tray, covered them up, and put them in the fridge to hang out until dinnertime. When you're ready to eat, you simply boil them in water until they float and let them go for about 4 minutes more. We wanted to try a couple in their pure state (without sauce) so we drizzled on a bit of truffle oil and a little freshly grated pecorino cheese...and they were so delicious. Just the right amount of chewyness & good texture...perfect! The rest we had with a simple garlic + olive oil tomato sauce...and more pecorino of course!

I'm pretty sure the meat-loving Hub would've probably preferred them better when combined with this recipe...but with a mixed greens salad and some other good eats, he didn't complain one bit! Looks easy, no?