Sunday 1 July 2012

Sloppy potato gnocchi in Roquefort and cream sauce

Professionals have a particular way of fiddling with these gnocchis to make them the "perfect shape", but it needn't be fiddly, I'm telling you. The less you knead this dough the lighter your gnocchi will be as you cook them.
So I chose a way that is really simple, by boiling 4 medium potatoes in their skin, cooling them down, peeling them and adding them to a food processor with one beaten egg and about one cup of all purpose flour. A pinch of nutmeg and a little salt added. Zap it up quickly with a few pulses, not more. It will be gooey, but don't mind that. Some may call it,  uhm, "rustic"?

Bring your salty water to a boil and scoop out (by heating a spoon for few seconds in the boiling water between each scoop), some wallnut sized dollops. When they surface to the top of the water, they are done. Freeze the rest for next time. First on a tray, then pop them in plastic bag.  You  will need only about 6-8 dollops per serving. Or if you live in the US of A, or happen to have a massive appetite, double that.
(I see food portions at restautants there are massive)

Yes, they are not the shape as they supposed to be by Italian professional standard, made nicely with the fork incisions, but as you can see they are also not too bad to look at either.  And the taste is just the same. If not better. I am nor Italian, nor professional, so I have the perfect excuse for making sloppy gnocchis. Yay! And perhaps so do you.

Choose the tastiest potatoes you find. I chose the red skinned variety that is mostly used for salads. Nice firm texture, deep yellow in colour and tasty as hell. Here in Spain, they simply call them Patatas Rojas (Red Potatoes).

For the sauce, I heated up a good spooful of sour cream, with a little water, same amount of roquefort cheese, few springs of fresh thyme and a dollop of olive oil. It will take less than a minute, untill your cheese melts into the heavenly mixture.  When it all melted down switch off the heat, cover it up and let the Thyme infuse.   You can of course use the real cream instead of sour cream if you prefer, but in that case omit the water.   Voila.  Home made sloppy gnocchi!

1 comment:

  1. When the weather cools down, I am going to give this a try!

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