Light and fluffy gnocchi
Doug Richey, head chef at Santi Restaurant, tops his gnocchi dish with amaretti cookie crumbs at the restaurant in Santa Rosa on Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2011.
BETH SCHLANKER/ PDPublished: Tuesday, March 1, 2011 at 10:33 a.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, March 1, 2011 at 10:33 a.m.
Eating gnocchi presents a paradox. Made correctly, the pillowy potato dumplings should be feather-light yet filling, rustic yet refined.
They are equally at home on grandma's table or a white-tablecloth restaurant, and as easy to consume as they are difficult to pronounce.
“I'm a big fan of gnocchi,” said Douglas Richey, the new head chef at Santi restaurant in Santa Rosa. “People just buy them, and they don't care what you do with them .
The secret to light-as-a-feather gnocchi is to start with a simple, time-tested blend of egg, flour and potato.
“The Old Italian cooks celebrate the potato, not the chef,” he explained. “Our gnocchi tastes like potato .
Recipes for gnocchi dumplings have been traced back to the 1300s, making it one of the oldest recorded dishes, according to food historians. Like much of Italian home cooking, gnocchi is both affordable and versatile, offering a vehicle to use up all kinds of leftovers in the thrifty kitchen.
In Italy, Romans make gnocchi with semolina flour, milk and cheese. The Tuscans put spinach and ricotta in theirs. Up north in the region of Lombardy, it's not a fall harvest feast without pumpkin gnocchi.
Richey said potato gnocchi are more popular in the northern region of Italy, where there isn't a lot of wheat grown.
Although making gnocchi is simpler than handmade pasta, it's still a labor of love, requiring substantial time and a bit of skill. Richey developed his gnocchi methodology over the years under the wing of former Santi chef Liza Hinman, who calls the delicate dumplings “fluffy little pillows.”
“There's no such thing as a gnocchi recipe, because there are a lot of variables,” he said. “It's mostly method and technique, and it's the small details that count.”
After reading the gnocchi recipe in celebrity cheff Giorgio Locatell's cookbook, “Made in Italy: Food and Stories,” Richey streamlined his method, resulting in a lighter dough.
“I used to spend the whole day rolling it out, and my shoulders would hurt,” he said. “Now, it's just a quick little roll of the dough strip, and I haven't overworked the potato.”
Here is the step-by-step method from Richey for making gnocchi. Required tools include a ricer or food mill, a wooden board or marble counter, and a dough scraper.
The choice of potato is crucial. Richey prefers to use Russet potatoes because of their high starch and low moisture. “Yukon golds can get sticky and gummy,” he said.
He blanches the potatoes, then bakes them in the oven to dry them out. Then he peels the potatoes while hot and rices them immediately.
“It's important to rice the potato while it's hot,” he said. “Otherwise they can get gluey.”
Next, he adds the eggs to the potatoes and gently incorporates them, being careful not to overwork the potato. Using his hands, he sprinkles the potato mixture lightly with all-purpose flour, pokes holes in the dough, then folds the dough over, to incorporate the flour.
“I can feel the crumb of the potato and how moist it is,” he said, explaining why he makes the holes.
Once the dough starts to stick to the surface, he uses a dough scraper to pick up the dough and fold it over.
Depending on the age of the potato, its moisture content, and the relative humidity of the kitchen, he will add more or less flour to the dough, until it reaches the right consistency.
“It's all in the feel,” he said. “It should have bounce and give, like a baby's butt. It should hold its form and not be too wet.”
If it is too wet, he will keep adding more flour until he can flip the dough over without having it stick. When it's ready, Richey then rolls the dough into a rough oval, pressing the front end of the dough to about a half-inch deep.
He puts flour in front of the dough, then using a cleaver, cuts the dough into narrow strips and gives each strip a quick roll. Working quickly, he cuts each strip into little pillows with a knife. Then he takes each pillow and flips it diagonally across a wooden gnocchi board, to create a football shape with seashell ridges on the top. (You can also use a fork.)
The ridges give the gnocchi a handmade look, Richey said, and create more surface for the sauce. Once the gnocchi are fully formed, you can either freeze them immediately or cook them in rapidly boiling water.
“It takes two minutes for frozen gnocchis, and 30 to 45 seconds for fresh,” Richey said. “Then we finish cooking them in the pan, with the sauce.”
As a teenager, Richey got one of his first jobs at Pasta Bella in Sebastopol, where he worked the saute station and made fresh pasta.
His training continued at Pearson & Co. catering and the Seafood Brasserie in Santa Rosa. After working at various resorts in Las Vegas, he returned to Sonoma County in 2006 and landed in the Santi kitchen in Geyserville.
“They had food that nobody else had,” he said. “I knew I had to be exposed to it.”
Now as skilled at making his own sausage as he as at making gnocchi and pasta, Richey tries to stay true to the Santi tradition.
“If you can't do it the right way, don't do it,” he said. “We really do honor tradition and our motto of taking Italian food back 75 years.”
This recipe is from Douglas Richey, head chef of Santi restaurant in Santa Rosa. Here are the tools you will need to make gnocchi: heavy sauce pot for blanching the potato and poaching your finished gnocchi; a sheet pan for the drying stage and shaping stage; food mill or ricer; heavy rolling pin; gnocchi board or a fork; slotted spoon; colander; large saute pan at least 12 inches wide.
Wine suggestion: Try this with a light cabernet sauvignon or a Barolo.
Gnocchi Burro Fuso with Rock Shrimp
Makes 2 to 3 servings
For gnocchi:
— Enough water to cover potatoes
1½ pounds Russet potatoes
1 whole egg
1 egg yolk
2½ cups all-purpose flour plus approximately 2 cups for dusting your table, hands and finished product.
For sauce:
12 ounces American rock shrimp, cleaned and deveined (or any shrimp)
5 ounces unsalted butter
2-3 ounces water
— Zest of 1 lemon
— A half lemon, juiced
— Scant pinch of Calabrian chili or regular chili flake
1 medium to large garlic clove, sliced very thin or minced fine.
— Pinch of salt
— Pinch of pepper.
1½ tablespoons chopped parsley
2 sage leaves
¼ cup toasted bread crumbs for garnish/texture
For gnocchi, Step 1: (the hurry up and wait stage):
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Clean your potatoes under cold water by scrubbing with a clean green scrubby. Take a fork and pierce the potatoes all over at least 6 times.
Place potatoes in your heavy-bottom saucepan and cover with cold water. Set on a low flame and allow to poach until fork tender, not falling apart. Never boil the potatoes. Keep it slow and gentle. Depending on the size of your whole potato, this stage should take anywhere from 45 minute to an hour and twenty minutes. While this is happening, prepare all the parts for your sauce: Clean shrimp, zest lemon, separate the yolk from the white of the egg.
When your potatoes are tender, carefully remove them from the hot water with a slotted spoon and place them onto your sheet pan. Place the sheet pan with your potatoes in your 400-degree oven for about 5 minuets to dry them well from the poach.
Gnocchi, Step 2 (the ouch-ouch-ouch stage):
This is the tricky part. You must peel and rice your screaming hot potatoes while they are, you guessed it, screaming hot. If you allow your potato to cool you will find the dough to be very sticky and hard to work with. The trick from this point forward is to work fairly quickly.
Peel your potatoes by hand, using a small knife to score and peel back the skin. Place your peeled potatoes into your food mill or ricer. Pass the potato through the mill onto a flat surface and form into a small pile.
Whisk together your egg and yolk and set aside long enough for the dough to cool down. (A good measure of time for this would be washing off your sheet pan and drying it, then dusting it with flour for a future step.)
Gnocchi, Step 3 (The wow! my fingers are all sticky and gummed up stage):
Kids love this part. Start working the beaten egg into the dough with your hands. It's not imperative that you incorporate the egg thoroughly as you will be working the dough further with the adding of flour.
Slowly and by hand, start folding in the flour. You will likely use a little more than 2 cups to reach the desired consistency of the dough. It should feel like a bread dough to the touch, and it should peel from your working surface without sticking. Adding more and more flour will make a tougher and more foolproof dough but your end result will taste less like potato and more like flour.
Gnocchi Step 4 (the fun part):
Take the dough and, on a well floured surface, begin rolling it out to the desired thickness of the gnocchi, ¾ to 1 inch thick. Once you have a sheet that is the desired thickness, you can begin cutting squared snakes of dough that are equal on all sides.
Move each snake aside as you cut the dough and make sure to dust them with a little extra flour as you go. Your dough is likely still warm if you have been moving fast enough and so the dough is still hydrating. This can make it stick if you don't dust with flour. Once you have cut your snakes you can start cutting individual “pillows” of dough that you will again set aside as you go.
When all your gnocchi are cut, that's when the gnocchi board or fork comes into play. Using an equal yet gentle downward and forward pressure, fling the wads of dough off your gnocchi board (or fork) and onto your now cleaned and floured sheet pan. Continue with this until all your little gnocchi are holding their shape. If by chance they are not holding their shape, ball them back together and work in a little more flour.
Clean out your blanching pot and fill with cold water. Bring it to a boil and salt to taste.
Now you have a choice: to freeze, or not to freeze. You may, if you like, take the whole sheet pan of gnocchi and freeze them for later use. If you are in a hurry, they are ready to poach (so long as your sauce is ready).
Sauce, Step 5: (the ridiculously simple and very tasty, yet kind of dangerous stage):
Now you get to make your sauce. The timing of this stage is important.
Place your saute pan on a low flame with the butter and sage in the pan.
Move your butter around in a swirly motion to prevent the solids from sticking to the bottom of the pan.
Allow the butter to start to brown ever so golden before the dangerous part.
Danger, this step will make your butter pop and spit. Before you go from beurre noisette to beurre noir, ladle in a few ounces of your poaching water. This will emulsify your brown butter and give it that nice beaded edge.
Squeeze in your lemon juice and add in your zest, garlic, chili, pepper, and shrimp. Gently poach the shrimp until done about 2 minutes or so. Add more water as needed to maintain emulsification. You want to keep it fairly loose at first to allow the shrimp to cook. However, by the time you add the gnocchi, you want that nice beaded edge to the sauce again.
Once the sauce is set and looking emulsified, drop gnocchi into boiling water. As soon as one starts to rise to the top, remove them all with a colander or slotted spoon and place them into your sauce. The gnocchi will add a little water to the sauce, so allow them to cook a few seconds on a moderate flame. You can now add your parsley and give a quick toss. Pour your finished product into a wide bowl and garnish with toasted bread crumbs.
You can reach Staff Writer Diane Peterson at 521-5287 or diane.peterson@pressdemocrat.com.
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