Gnocchi: A Recipe From the Vault

THE RECIPE: From the Vault

Note to readers: “From the Vault” recipes are ones that I cooked up at my old apartment before the big move of March 22, 2010. Since I was engrossed in moving, I didn’t get to write a bunch of them up and they were backblogged. So, I will be rolling them out over the next few weeks, mixed in with my latest concoctions. Enjoy!

Gnocchi with Thyme Butter Sauce

Giada De Laurentiis, Everyday Pasta

Ingredients

Gnocchi

2 baking potatoes, such as russets (about 12 ounces each)

1 egg, lightly beaten

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

¾ cup all-purpose flour

¼ cup shaved Pecorino Romano, for garnish

Thyme Butter Sauce

¾ cup unsalted butter (11/2 sticks)

1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

THIS COOK’S STORY

Gnocchi. The word itself struck fear into my heart. I’d always been nervous to order it at restaurants because I was afraid those little balls of goodness would sit in my stomach like rocks. The thought of buying them at the store and making them seemed absurd---surely, I’d mess that up. And the idea of making them from scratch seemed to be a feat comparable to me building my own space shuttle and circling Mars. But, once again, Giada to the rescue.

It’s as if she knows just how little I know about food and cooking and caters to my lack of knowledge with truly simple recipes. Case and point: Gnocchi. While I still struggle with how long to cook boxed pasta (& yes, I’ve thrown it onto my wall to see if its done before), her recipe for this culinary challenge seemed easy. Shall we?

The Warnings

When I told people I was making gnocchi, reactions were pretty much all the same: disbelief.

“Really, you’re making gnocchi?”

“Did you carve out an entire afternoon…my grandmother spends the whole day making gnocchi…”

Uh oh, what was I getting myself into? But, how can that be possible, Giada’s recipe does not involve making the “flour & egg volcanoes” I was warned about and the cooking time of the finished gnocchi was like 3 minutes—OMG, really? 3 minutes? This all seemed too good to be true.

Haters, step aside, I am making gnocchi…let the preparations begin!

Shopping up a storm…literally

I decided to cook this dish the weekend of one of the 90 blizzards that hit NYC this year. It started snowing on Friday and that’s when I decided to go shopping for everything I needed. Smart move!

I had to hit up Sur La Table to get a rolling pin because the recipe mentioned rolling each scoop of dough “into about a ½ inch diameter rope.” While the idea of rolling dough into ropes seemed sort of an oxymoron, I saw “roll” and figured “pin,” so I bought one. More on how well that worked out for me later…

Next up: Whole Foods. Oh yeah. But before I trudge to Whole Foods, I have to go back to Sur La Table. Why, you ask? Well, I decided to try to be efficient and go get the rolling pin in the am, before work. Then while at work, I decided I also needed to get a mini food processor. What better time to go get it than as dark was falling and the snow was picking up? So, back to Sur La Table for a pit stop and a processor before heading out to the Whole Foods on Houston.

My local Whole Foods is the one in Tribeca. I love that one. It’s never crowded, it's spacious and I know where everything is. The one on Houston was crowded, cramped and I know where nothing is. After trying to track down Thyme…and not seeing any in the fresh produce section, I found some packaged in a random side section. I had never actually seen Thyme before and I quickly knew some Googling would be in order once I got home to figure out how to use it.

I managed to survive that Whole Foods and then spent 20 minutes trying to find a cab as I sloshed through that special mix of snow, sleet and dirt that can only be found in NYC. Making the gnocchi could not possibly be as painful as this, right?

Commence Cooking!

Since the sauce consisted of 2 ingredients: Thyme & Butter, I figured I’d leave that for the end and get started with the gnocchi.

What’s in gnocchi? I certainly didn’t know until I read this recipe. I think there are several kinds of gnocchi you can make and these were clearly potato gnocchi. Step #1: microwaving 2 potatoes and then scooping out the hot insides. Now, this sounds simple, but normally when things sound simple they are anything, but. Lo and behold: it really was that easy!

Cook and scoop potatoes: CHECK. And, Dear Giada, thanks for offering up the option to cook those taters in the microwave!

Now I just had to throw in the egg, some salt & pepper sift some flour (oh yeah, I had to buy a flour sift at Sur La Table too) and stir it up until it was blended. Done.

Now. The scooping and rolling.

Scoop out a large spoonful of dough: CHECK.

Roll said dough into a rope: Uh, what?

I had my pin, I had my dough but this was NOT making sense and of course there were no pics in the book that illustrated this process. And why was the dough sticking to my rolling pin…aren’t you meant to flour those suckers or something? Why wasn’t anything written about that in the recipe. GIADA, this is so not like you!!

After a few unsuccessful rolling attempts and no rope, I had a culinary epiphany: I was meant to roll the scoops in my hands to form long ropes! Like if you were making snakes or worms with play dough! EUREKA! I didn’t need this rolling pin afterall…phew, cause that was not going so well.

Rolling dough and creating gnocchi: CHECK.

And so the process of making gnocchi snakes and cutting them into one inch pieces began. The whole rolling the individual gnocchi over a fork to make pretty indentations wasn’t the smoothest process, nor the most productive, but I think I managed to make them look half decent.

Once all of my gnocchi where shaped, it was time to get the sauce ready & cook those puppies.

Hence, cutting the thyme. I Googled it and a Youtube video came up with this guy who showed you how to get the leaves off thyme. Yeah, I watched it. And no, it’s not really that easy to slide the leaves off the stem like the guy in the video did (nor is it that easy to enjoy the process as much as him), but I managed. I tossed those into the pan with the butter and it’s back to the gnocchi.

Next, cooking the little guys. They only take 3 minutes to cook AND there’s a built in way to know when they are done: they rise to the top of the pot of water. GENIUS! These are the easiest things ever…no, really, they really are. I admit, I was cautiously optimistic about mine actually rising to the top within the 2-3 minute time frame, but they DID!!!!

And so, once they were all cooked, I threw them in the pan with the thyme butter sauce and voila: Gnocchi with Thyme Butter Sauce. I had some friends over for Sunday night dinner and they loved it!

Homemade, tasty, gnocchi: CHECK!