Skip to main content

Gnocchi



They say you have to be an Italian grandmother to make light, pillowy gnocchi. Now that's the kind of statement that keeps you from trying out making your own potato gnocchi. But I happened to have some boiled potatoes at hand and an extra hour to kill so I finally gave the recipe a shot. And won't I surprised at how easy it turned out to be. Plus for a first attempt, not bad at all.

So go ahead, boil a potato or two and give Italian grannies some competition in the gnocchi department. You can also make your own tomato sauce (and the recipe for that follows) but this gnocchi will be equally good tossed in some butter and herbs or mixed with some creamy alfredo if that's more your thing.

Ingredients
For gnocchi

2 potatoes, boiled
3 tbsp plain flour
salt and pepper to taste
For tomato sauce
4 tomatoes
1/2 cup tomato puree
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1/2 tbsp oregano
1 tsp red chilli flakes
1/2 tsp garlic powder
salt and pepper to taste
10-12 basil leaves

The sauce takes longer to cook so lets start with that. Peel the tomatoes - you do that by blanching them in boiling water for 30 seconds, then putting them in cold water so the peel just slides off. Quarter the peeled tomatoes, take out the seeds and puree the deseeded slices in a blender. Put the puree in a saucepan alongwith canned tomato paste/puree, vinegar, oregano, chilli flakes and garlic powder. Add 1 cup water and bring the whole mix to a boil. Then reduce the heat to a simmer and let the sauce cook on its own for 45 minutes to an hour until it is reduced to a consistency you like. Add salt and pepper to taste. Mince half the basil leaves and mix into the sauce, reserving the rest for garnish.

Time for gnocchi now. Peel the potatoes and grate/mash them. Add salt and fresh ground pepper. Add 2 tbsp flour and knead lightly until you have a dough. You might need to add some more flour, depending on your potatoes. Just mix until the potatoes and dough are combined, taking care not to handle the dough too much. Divide the dough into two halves and roll each half into a rope about 1/2 inch thick. Cut off 1 inch pieces of the rope and press each against a fork to create indentations on your gnocchi.

Boil water in a saucepan and add 1 tsp salt to it. Drop gnocchi into boiling water 5-6 at a time. They will rise to the top in 2-3 minutes; keep cooking for around a minute after that. Remove with a slotted spoon and pop straight into the simmering sauce. Mix lightly until the gnocchi are coated with the sauce. Serve garnished with basil leaves and if you like, parmesan cheese.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Mystery Fruit

This only happened a few times every year, just when the rainy season kicked in. A street hawker will come by, straw basket on head. He will yell "kaul chapni" and I will run out to buy a bundle of these. Stuck together like flowers, they looked like a bouquet. Every hole contains a little fruit. You break out the package, peel the tiny fruit that pops out and eat it. Done slowly, it can take you an hour to eat an head. Or did, when I was about 12 years old. That was the last time I saw this fruit. I've never seen it again, didn't even know what it was called or where it came from. Three weeks back, Vikram Doctor wrote about a store in Khar that sells Sindhi foods. He described this fruit and I knew it came from my vivid childhood memories. And finally, I knew we were talking about lotus fruit. Now talk about coincidences. Last weekend, I was passing by a lane in Bandra and for the first time in many, many years I saw the straw basket filled with my mytery fru

Of Brun and Bun Maska

There is more to Bombay's breads than the pao that goes into pao bhaji and vada pao. There's Brun. and there's bun. We will get there. First, you have to get to know the city's Parsis. And Iranis, who are also Zoroastrians, but came to city a little later, in the late 19th or early 20th century. And when they came, they brought with them these little cafes that dot the city. I am no expert on Irani chai cafes. And I can't tell you whether Yazdani Bakery will provide you the best experience or Kyani's. But I can tell you a few things you need to ignore when you get there. Appearances don't matter; so ignore the fact that the marble/glass top tables and the wooden chairs look a bit dilapidated. Also ignore the rundown look the place sports. Instead, get yourself settled. And order a bun muska. This one's familiar to you as a first cousin of the soft hamburger bun. It's similar, but just a tad bit sweeter. Maska, of course, is the generous dollop o

Announcing AWED : Britain

Before I ate my first Italian wood fired pizza, before I went to that swanky Japanese sushi bar for the first time, or the neighborhood Chinese joint, the first non-Indian cuisine I encountered was British. Not real food, mind you, but the tempting, oh so delicious descriptions in my favorite novels. From Enid Blyton to Jane Austen to P.G. Wodehouse, every favorite character in every favorite novel seems to have food on their mind. Yes, British food gets ridiculed a lot. But forget their main course dishes for now, and think of the full English breakfast and the elegant afternoon teas. Then try imagining the world without cucumber sandwiches or potato chips and you will realize you can't do without British food. Which is why when I saw that DK was looking for hosts for her monthly event AWED (A Worldly Epicurean's Delight) and there has never been a British AWED, I promptly signed up. The rules are simple really: Make any vegetarian or vegan British dish (eggs are