If you’re going to make pasta at home, gnocchi is a great choice. You don’t need any special equipment, and you don’t have to end up with perfect uniform shapes. If they’re all slightly different, it gives them a rustic, shabby-chic kind of character.
Gnocchi are also a perfect vehicle for one of my favorite flavor combinations of all time: pumpkin + brown butter + sage.
That said, despite the user-friendly qualities above, gnocchi-making is a process. It’s not difficult, but it’s involved. That’s why I’ve included a few “gnocchi hacks” to streamline it as much as possible. Your nonna in Valle d’Aosta may not approve, but they work for me.
1) Use your food processor to mash your pumpkin and potato. You can mash them both at once and combine them at the same time.
2) Make your dough on a sheet pan. If you spread the pumpkin/potato mixture in a thin layer, and sift your flour over the top, you get a much larger surface area of wet ingredients to dry, allowing you to incorporate them more easily, without over mixing or kneading. And you want to avoid kneading if you can. Kneading creates gluten, which is great for bagels, but not so much for gnocchi. As a bonus, the sheet pan contains the mess. You will have to roll and shape the dough on your counter, but it will be dry and smooth and easy to manage by that point.
EQUIPMENT: Sheet Pan, Food Processor, Potato Masher or Pastry Cutter, Flour Sifter or Fine Mesh Strainer, Medium Pot, Large Pan
Featured in Episode 9: Pumpkin
Pumpkin Gnocchi with Sage Walnut Pesto
Ingredients
- 1 cup Pumpkin Puree (approx. 1/2 a 2 lb. pumpkin)
- 1/2 cup mashed Russet Potato
- 1 Egg
- Up to 2 cups All-Purpose Flour (plus extra for work surface)
- 1 tsp Salt (plus extra for the pasta water)
- 1/2 tsp Cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp Sugar
- 6 tbsp Salted Butter
- 1/2 Lemon
- Salt to taste
- FOR THE PESTO:
- 1/2 cup fresh Sage leaves, loosely packed
- 1/4 cup grated Parmesan
- 1/4 cup Olive Oil
- 1/3 cup Walnuts, chopped
- 1 clove Garlic
- Salt and Pepper to taste
Directions
- Step 1 Preheat the oven to 400 degrees to bake your pumpkin and potato. Cut your pumpkin in half and scrape out the pulp and seeds. Save the seeds for roasting, if you wish! Rub with neutral oil and season with salt. Clean the potato, but no need to prep it any more than that. Bake for 40-50 minutes until both are soft throughout.
- Step 2 Make the pesto. Toast your walnuts in a dry skillet for 5 minutes or so until browned. Add all the ingredients except the oil to the bowl of a food processor and blend, drizzling the oil in gradually, until a smooth paste forms. Set aside.
- Step 3 When the potato and pumpkin are cool enough to handle, remove the skins and combine the potato and pumpkin flesh together in the food processor. Process until well mashed and well combined. You could also do this with a potato ricer.
- Step 4 Spread the pumpkin and potato mixture in a thin layer on the sheet pan. Beat the egg and drizzle it all over. Then sprinkle on the salt, cinnamon, and sugar. Start with a 1/3-3/4 of a cup of flour, and sift it over the top. Using a potato masher or pastry cutter, start to incorporate the dry ingredients into the wet. Continue to add flour, a little at a time, then switch from the potato masher to your hands and using a folding motion, shape the dough into a log. Your final product should be smooth and not sticky. TIP: Try not to knead. Stretching and pulling creates gluten, and gluten creates stiff and gummy gnocchi.
- Step 5 Transfer your log onto a generously floured work surface, and slice into inch-thick slabs. Take one slab at a time and gently roll it into a snake. Slice the snake crosswise into 1-inch pieces. Spread the freshly cut gnocchi on the sheet pan over a sprinkling of flour so they don’t stick.
- Step 6 Start a pot of water boiling to cook the gnocchi, and salt it generously. At the same time, heat the butter over medium heat in a large pan. As it starts to melt, whisk it continuously and the butter will foam up a little as you whisk. When the color starts to darken and it starts to smell nutty and delicious, turn the heat down to low and squeeze in the juice from half a lemon.
- Step 7 When the water is boiling, add the gnocchi. Add only a few at a time so they don’t clump up. After a few minutes, they’ll float to the top. Using a slotted spoon or strainer, transfer them to the pan with and toss them with the butter. Don’t discard the pasta water!
- Step 8 Mix 2-4 spoonfuls of the pesto with 1-2 spoonfuls of pasta water. This is not an exact measurement – you just want to thin out the pesto enough that you can drizzle it.
- Step 9 Transfer the gnocchi to bowls, and drizzle with the pesto – as much or as little as you like! Finish with parmesan cheese.
