I spent a lot of time learning the ins and outs of the meditative practice of gnocchi making, and have tried in several blog posts to translate my kitchen scribbles and my industrial sized amounts of this and that to render an easily do-able gnocchi that takes a short amount of time. I failed. Here, though, is the version I use at home with great ease and joy, with plenty of tasters to agree that they are quite light and authentic tasting, and way better than packaged. Quick! Cheap! Easy! All the things a girl like me likes. Here’s Harold Import Company‘s recipe, directly from Nonna. Fante Family’s Super-easy Gnocchi!
I love cooking this up with some sauteed zucchini, lemon, beans and a liberal sploosh of marscapone cheese. Which I also like to make myself, thankyouverymuch. This one I’ll just type at you.
- 1 pint heavy cream
- 1/8th of a teaspoon of tartaric acid (you can also use about 2 teaspoons of lemon juice, but it’s a tad more tangy that way).
Over medium heat, warm the cream until it reaches 180 F. stir in the acid or lemon juice. Continuously stir this mixture and adjust the heat as necessary to keep the temperature at 180 F. for about 5 minutes.
Remove from heat and pour into a sieve lined with several layers of cheesecloth or a coffee filter (I prefer coffee filters, actually, cause they’re much less expensive and have a much finer mesh than most cheesecloth. If I have a pretty big sieve, I lay a few of them inside it, just barely overlapping, so the whole surface is covered by coffee filter paper).
Put this in the refer and let the whey drain off it for about 24 hours. The benefits: super cheap marscapone. The drawbacks: you must waiiiiiit for iiiiiit.
These recipes are bonus recipes for my newest PCC Cooks Class, Mediterranean Vacation. There are a couple seats left here and there, check it out soon before they’re gone! We make and eat: A Grande Aioli (egg and garlic sauce with dipping veggies), Coca di Trampo (Mallorcan flatbread with fresh summer veggies), Zucchini con Limone (lemon, zucchini and canellini ceans with potato gnocchi and marscapone (helloooo), and a dessert of Karidopita, a semolina cake with honey syrup and yogurt. IF THAT ISN”T ENOUGH, I serve you a Squash Tagine with Couscous, with garbanzo beans, olives and preserved lemon, and some home made yogurt. Get on your eating pants!!