My name is Anna and I just arrived from Luxembourg for my second year in Aberdeen. In order to remain as healthy as possible, I always try to stock up on enough energy at the beginning of the semester to survive the rainy weather, endless lecture hours and, of course, the essay period. Feeding on porridge or haggis won’t bring my flat mates and me through the rough student life so from time to time we try to explore the food world by navigating through the French, Croatian, Russian and Italian recipe books with our kitchen utensils. This week, we decided to flee from the wind and gray sky that hung over Aberdeen and go on a journey to an Italian recipe sanctuary where we discovered a magnificent description of how to make the potato gnocchi, a dish very much appreciated in Italy since the 19th century.
The ingredients (in grams) you will need to feed four people are:
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Potatoes: 600g
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Flour: 200g
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1 egg yolk
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Parmesan cheese
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Salt, pepper
Step 1: Peel the potatoes, cut them in 4 or 6 parts, put them in a pot with cold water, bring to boil and let them cook until they are crumbly.
Step 2: Drain the water from the pot and mash the potatoes with a potato masher and let them cool a bit.
Step 3: Add 75 grams of flour, egg yolk and grated parmesan cheese. Add salt and the rest of the flour and mix it all. Work the dough as long as it takes to get it smooth and not sticky. If the dough is still sticky, add some more flour.
Step 4: Cut slices of dough and roll them into sausages, as thick as your fingers. Roll them in flour so that they won’t stick to the table. Cut the sausages into pieces of approximately 1 cm and put them into hot water.
Step 5: Bring to boil and cook them until all the gnocchi float on the surface. Ta daaa! It’s ready!!
To make this traditional Italian dish even more exquisite, you can make a pancetta cream to go with your gnocchi. Here’s how:
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Put some butter into a pot, let it melt and add some bacon or ham cut previously in small pieces. Cook it until it’s crunchy.
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Add single cream and let it boil until the mixture becomes slightly thicker. Add a handful of grated parmesan cheese.
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Put your cooked gnocchi into the sauce and mix it all well.
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Garnish with basil and serve hot.
If you’re not really into the creamy stuff, I’d suggest you replace the cream with tomato sauce or serve your gnocchi with pesto. Enjoy! =)