Gnocchi making 101

Two Saturday's ago was Gnocchi day. Nonna insisted that she cook Gnocchi before I went overseas and I sure wasn't complaining. It's a once in a blue moon thing, saved for birthday's and special occasions. More so, it's time consuming rolling all the Gnocchi and Nonna can't do it on her own.

Since I hadn't helped in a while I expected it to be much more difficult, but really it's not that hard!

So let's begin:

Gnocchi (this served 8 people with leftovers)
4kg of Potatoes (Desiree potatoes preferably)
4 eggs
6 cups of plain flour
1/2 cup Salt (you can be as generous as you like)
Your own pasta sauce (like a Bolognese sauce)

1. Steam the potatoes (skin on) until they are soft. Leave them to cool for about 5 minutes or so and then peel the skin off.

2. Using this contraption (not sure what it is called), place the potatoes inside and squeeze into a bowl. Leave to cool for about 15-20 minutes and stir occasionally so the bottom potatoes cool too. We left the bowl to cool outside. 

   

3. Add about 1/2 cup of salt, two full eggs and 2 egg yolks to the potato mixture and combine.

4. Slowly begin to add 2-3 cups of flour. After each cup, keep mixing and kneading the dough. You don't want the dough to be sticky...or hard...it's got to be thick and soft. 

5. Place the dough on a floured bench, and keep kneading and adding flour until the dough seems ready. Roll it into a long and very thick roll. The inside should look like below and the outside should be floury (if that is even a word).

6. Cut a slice of the big roll and the roll it out into a much thinner, snake-like roll.

7. Cut the small roll into piece roughly 2cm long.

8. Once all of the dough has been cut into gnocchi size pieces, out come the forks and it's time for gnocchi rolling time. 

Here is how to roll a gnocchi (my first YouTube video ever made!)

It should look like this!!

9. When you are ready to cook, boil a pot of water with a fair amount of salt. Once the water is boiled, place a plate or two of gnocchi in at a time. The gnocchi is cooked when the pieces float to the top.

10. Mix the cooked gnocchi with your sauce, add a more than generous amount of Parmesan cheese and you are good to go!

Mum and my Aunty ready to eat!!