Two for the dough

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Unlike most vegetables, potatoes are made for long-term storage…if you have the perfect place to store them.  You know, some place dark, humid, and about 40 degrees.  Unless you have a root cellar, most of us do not have these ideal conditions.  My basement is cool, but not that cool!  As a rule, I maybe get about two months out of potatoes if they’re stored in my kitchen.  So what do you do if you find yourself with an overabundance of potatoes?

There are lots of things you can do - make mashed potatoes or cook up a mess of fries or hash browns, and then freeze it all up for a rainy day.  I decided to use up my massive store of potatoes from the CSA (about 13 pounds, by my last count) to make potato gnocchi.  It’s really easy, although slightly time consuming.  And in the end, you get a good supply of fabulous gnocchi!

Start with potatoes.  You need good, starchy potatoes, rather than waxy potatoes.  In other words, you want to avoid new potatoes, fingerling potatoes, round white potatoes, and round red potatoes.  Use Yukon Golds or Russets or something like that.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, cut the potatoes almost in half, arrange on a baking sheet, and bake for an hour.

As soon as you can handle the potatoes without burning the crap out of your hands, peel the potatoes.  The skin should just come right off.  Work fast - you need to get those babies through a potato ricer before they cool down!  Why a potato ricer?  You want nice, fluffy potatoes and no other way gives you just the right consistency.  After the potatoes are riced, you can let them cool down to room temp…just don’t throw them in the fridge.

Next is the question of eggs - to use eggs or not to use eggs.  I’ve made them both ways, and it’s fine either way as long as you don’t use too much egg.  You absolutely don’t need egg, and your gnocchi will turn out a little lighter without the egg.  The batch I made here has eggs.  Let’s say about one beaten egg per five pounds of potatoes. 

The real trick to making good gnocchi is getting the dough right, which means adding just enough flour but not too much.  Most recipes call for about a cup and a half of flour per two pounds of riced potatoes.  I just keep adding flour, a bit at a time, until the dough feels right to me.  Specifically, it should be pretty smooth and slightly sticky.  The longer you work the dough, the more flour you’ll need…and then your gnocchi will be like bricks.  But when you feel like the dough is good, put it aside in a bowl draped with a clean towel and let it rest for 20 minutes.

The next part goes pretty quickly - grab a hunk of dough, roll it out into a half-inch rope, and cut into inch long nuggets.  There are several opinions about finishing the gnocchi, but all agree on one thing: there needs to be some nooks or crannies to grab the sauce.  Some people score the gnocchi with fork tines.  Some do so while bending it over their thumb to form a little inner pocket.  I go the easy route and just make a little depression in the the middle of each dumpling with the end of a fork.

And then you can either cook ‘em or freeze ‘em.  If you opt to freeze, be sure to spread the gnocchi out in a single sheet on a baking tray and freeze them this way.  You can pack them into a freezer Ziploc or whatever when they’re frozen.  You just don’t want them sticking together, you know?  For cooking, just put on a pot of water to boil, toss in the gnocchi, and scoop them out as they float to the surface.

Best of all, you can make gnocchi entirely out of local ingredients - potatoes and eggs are easy to come by, and you can purchase Daisy pastry flour (made in Lancaster, PA) at the Fair Food Farmstand at Reading Terminal Market.  Hooray!