Gnocchi, gnocchi, gnocchi...

Andrew has been agitating to make gnocchi for a while now, and we finally had the time on a recent Saturday afternoon. With our farm potatoes, Massachusetts eggs, Kate's butter, home-grown sage, and King Arthur Flour, we made the most succulent, fluffy, light, airy, yummy, delicious...gnocchi! With that string of adjectives, you know they must have been good. In fact, I think they were the best gnocchi I have ever had, hands-down. For those of you who have never had them, gnocchi are tiny pillows of potato pasta, which are traditionally served in a sage-butter sauce. For the best results, handle the dough as little as possible to avoid developing the gluten in the flour and creating a gooey mess. Our recipe came from The New Doubleday Cookbook, but there are many out there.

Recipe:

For the gnocchi:
2 cups mashed potato (simply mashed with no added ingredients! We rice ours to make them as smooth and fluffy as possible.)
1 cup all-purpose flour, sifted.
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper (it calls for white, but we used black)
pinch of nutmeg

For the sage-butter sauce:
2-3 T salted butter
4-5 leaves fresh sage (or more!)

Lightly toss the ingredients with your hands or a fork until the very sticky dough comes together. We let the dough sit for about half an hour and then, on a heavily floured board, roll the dough into 1/2" thick ropes. These we cut into 1" pieces and Andrew rolls them on a fork to create the classic gnocchi shape - the little grooves hold the butter sauce (mmmm).

When a large pot of water comes to a boil, begin melting the butter and sage together in a large skillet until the butter begins to brown - turn down the heat (or off). The gnocchi go into the pot of boiling water about 20 at a time, until they bob to the surface. I remove these with a strainer after they cook at the surface for 30 seconds-1 minute, and throw them in to the warm sage-butter sauce. Top with some grated parmesan cheese, and you have a masterpiece.