Preparing Potatoes for Gnocchi
I was culling my emails from 31 January 2004 when I came across this bit of advice to a fellow citizen of my hometown of Bayonne, NJ regarding the best way to prepare potatoes for her gnocchi recipe:
You are steaming the potatoes, yes? Don't boil them, you will want to keep the starch inside.
If you want to try something really fantastic, put an unpeeled potato on a small 10 inch square of aluminum foil, sprinkle with rock salt (and garlic if you like), cover with the foil and place on a cookie sheet with oven set to 325.
After 35 minutes (or 45 minutes if oven was not preheated) take out and rinse off salt with cold water. Peel the skin off (a potato peeler will not be necessary) and proceed with regular recipe for potato gnocchi. More starch is kept in the potato this way than even steaming. This is a personal gnocchi technique of mine that you will not find in any cookbook and I share it with all the posters who love to cook.
BTW you will not need to add salt to the flour with this technique as a good portion will already have leached into the potato during cooking.
Although I personally avoid adding salt, I mentioned it in the email advice for those who absolutely cannot eat food without a dash of added salt.
The following YouTube video on How to Make Gnocchi will require you to have a "passatutto"
I suggest using the ricer since it helps to trap more air in the potatoes yielding a lighter gnocchi. If you fry your gnocchi then a gnocchi paddle is not necessary. If you intend on serving them with a sauce then the paddle is de rigueur as the grooves will help the sauce cling to the pasta much better. If you don't have a board try pressing against the inside of an egg slicer - gives a nice curved shape with lots of little grooves.
If you bake the potatoes in foil as I suggest instead of boiling them, the potatoes will come out less watery and thus enable you to use less flour making for a not-too doughy gnocchi and a lighter load in the tummy. For this reason I choose russet potatoes as they tend to be low in moisture compared to other varieties of potato.
Enjoy.
Little trivia:
Gnocchi is Italian for dumplings. Gnocchi with tomato sauce is known as strangolapreti or strangoloprevete, meaning priest stranglers, because a local priest liked them so much, and ate them so fast, that he choked on them.
