Gnocchi Recipe- Part II

The Recipe:

Serves 5-6 people
Preheat oven 350 degrees


Ingredients:

4 medium to large russet potatoes
2 egg yolks
AP flour (around a cup)
salt and pepper

Equipment:
Food Mill
Pastry Scraper
Sur la Table Pastry Scraper
Large slotted spoon or Chinese bamboo strainer
Bamboo Skimmer

A Pot of salted, boiling water (use this for your fist time making this gnocchi)

1. Prick potatoes with a fork to release steam. Place directly on oven rack and bake for around 45 minutes, or until cooked so that a fork pricked into the potato comes out quickly.
Always bake, never boil potatoes for gnocchi.

2. After potatoes are cooked, peel as quickly as your tender human fingers will allow. They will be very hot, but the hotter the potato, the better the gnocchi.

3. Once peeled, slice hot potatoes into sixths and puree through a food mill (on the medium to fine grater disk) directly onto a large, clean countertop surface covered lightly with sprinkled flower. I mill directly onto my kitchen island. Let cool.

4. Make a well in the center of the potatoes. Lightly sprinkle flour over the bottom of the well and over the layer of milled potatoes. Then, generously sprinkle salt and grind fresh pepper over the potatoes. Place the egg yolks into the well and stir with a fork or your fingers until yolks are broken.

5. Gradually mix the floured potato mixture into the egg yolks. Use your fingers and the pastry scraper to combine all ingredients on the counter surface.

6. Continue mixing ingredients together for two to three more minutes, until a uniform, fluff potato mass develops. As potato dough becomes too sticky to mix successfully, sprinkle more flour over mixture to loosen from your fingers. Note: use the pastry scraper to help mix together from the counter surface in order to utilize as little flour as possible. If too much flour is used- aim for 1/2 to 3/4 a cup, total- the gnochhi will be too firm. After your uniform mass develops, knead lightly for one more minute.

76. Cut the potato mass into quarters. Roll one quarter into a long, snakelike tube. Then, use the pastry scraper as a knife and slice a piece off from the end of the tube.

8. Stop. Test run. Drop the end piece into your medium boiling, salted test water. It's ready when it floats to the top- in about a minute. If it falls apart, its too mushy and needs (just) a touch +more flour. Go back to the mix, unite the quarters, add little flour and knead lightly for around 30 seconds more or until flour is fully incorporated in each section. Most times you will have added sufficient flour already by the test run, but if you didn't by the first time, your second flour run will be fine with a small flour addition.

9. Then cut again into quarters and roll each section into a long, snakelike tube. Then, use the pastry scraper as a knife and slice the tube into 1/2 inch pieces. Set aside the bits on a floured sheet pan and continue until all tubes are portioned into gnocchi.

7. Next, press the back of your fork lightly into each potato piece to make an indentation for sauce to nestle in later.

8. After finished with indenting the last pillow, refrigerate the gnocchi. When ready to eat, drop in salted, boiling water in three batches. Once a batch of gnocchi rise to the top of the pot, remove from boiling water with a small strainer or slotted spoon and place in large colander so water can be used for all gnocchi batches. Drizzle with olive oil. Repeat until finished.

9. Saucinate.

P.S: Here are some links to articles on Chef Dante Boccuzzi's, whose gnocchi recipe inspired this one, and one to his website. Pretty cool guy.


Dante Restaurant

Dante's Website

Gnocchi: Chef Dante Boccuzzi's Fluffy Potato Pillows

About seven years ago, Chef Dante Boccuzzi (of Silk’s, Nobu, Aureole) taught me how to make gnocchi. My potato world was changed forever.

Dante’s gnocchi were simply the lightest, the most supple and flavorful potato pillows that I’ve ever tried. More than just being pure deliciousness, they epitomized the savory, earthy essence of a potato, but with fluff.

Due to this elated potato experience, I have been ruined for most other gnocchi- mostly finding them too hard, too gummy, too heavy, too floury, or frankly, just too boring. No gnocchi have ever treated me as well or made me blush with culinary remembrance like those created in the Silk’s restaurant kitchen that day.

Of course Dante would have never announced that something of his doing was that grandiose. He’s not that type. He insisted that we call him by his first name rather than Chef and would carry conversations will us lowly beginning cooks as if we were equals and not inexperienced fledglings hoping to absorb some of his skill. Instead, he walked me over to a prep table, and asked me quietly if I would like to learn how to make the gnocchi that his grandmother taught him how to make as a young boy in Parma. This question, coming from the mouth of one of the nicest and talented chefs (with pretty, smiling eyes) that I ever had the opportunity to work with was enough to render me smitten with gnocchi forever. With his potato pillows, that is.

A couple weeks ago I decided to make that same gnocchi.

This was not a decision I took lightly. Before deciding to have a go at it, I recalled how I have routinely ruined perfectly easy and simple squash or ricotta-spinach gnocchi recipes from other sources. Butternut goo or cheese and spinach soup anyone? I wasn’t just nervous that I would be completely inept at making potato pillows, I was scared of killing my perfect Boccuzzi gnocchi memory. After debating whether it was better to keep a memory holy or attempt to bring it into fruition, into the living day, I made my decision. I headed to my recipe files. I was sure I wrote it down, and two of our favorite dinner guests were arriving at 6:30pm.

I didn’t write it down.

But I still made gnocchi. The mark of a great teacher, his pupil remembered the steps that he taught seven years later, without notes. I think… anyhow, the gnocchi were super and Dante inspired. And I'm still smitten with his potato touch.

In my next post I will include a recipe of of that memory. However, before giving the recipe, I’d just like to apologize to our guests that night, and my co-workers, and the wine bar customers. I was very excited and let’s all pray together that in a month or so, I’ll stop talking about the fluttering feeling I got in my tummy when lightly kneading the potato pillows on our kitchen prep table. I'm sorry.

In addition, because this is a wine and food pairing blog, I’ll reveal that the accompanying sauce served with the fluffy guys was mushroomey- Santa Cruz grown shitakes, dried porcinis, enoki’s, garlic, thyme, butter, and a squeeze of lemon. Simple. We drank this will an Andrew Rich Pinot Noir that my cousins (our dinner guests) brought over from their trip to Oregon. It was a fantastic match. Oregon Pinot Noirs are often celebrated for their light mushroom aroma, and the earthy streak running through the wine matched similar qualities in the sauce.

Recipe to come soon.