Potato Gnocchi with Walnut Pesto
Ingredients:
Pesto
1 cup fresh flat-leaf parsley
2 tablespoons capers
2 garlic cloves
3/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
3/4 cup walnut halves or diced walnuts
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
salt and pepper
Gnocchi (Not for the faint of heart)
1 pound starchy potatoes
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 egg, beaten
1 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for dusting
salt and pepper
Serves: 4 (641 calories per serving); Prep time: 90 minutes, minimum; Cooking time: about 10 minutes
Directions:
1. If you are making the gnocchi from scratch, boil the potatoes in their skins in a large saucepan. The recipe says this will take 30 - 35 minutes. It took my potatoes almost an hour, making me run pretty late. Drain well and cool slightly.
2. In the meantime, to make the pesto, chop the garlic (or use a micro-plane grater like I did) and the parsley. The recipe says to then put everything in a mortal and grind with the pestle, but I don't have one, nor do I have the time for that even if I did. I threw all of the pesto ingredients in a food processor (minus the cheese), with salt and pepper to taste, and then blended it into a paste. Then I added the cheese and stirred it in by hand.
3. When the potatoes are cool enough to handle, peel the skins and pass the potatoes through a sieve into a large bowl. This is by far the most time consuming aspect. Especially if you have a really fine sieve, like me.
4. The recipe apparently thinks this should take no time at all, because it says "while still hot, season well with salt and pepper." My potatoes were fairly cold once I finished with the sieve. Anywho, add in the Parmesan cheese. Beat in the egg and sift in the flour.
5. Mix together, then turn out on lightly floured surface and knead lightly until it becomes a smooth dough. I used my hands for both steps.
Then the recipe says to add more flour if the dough seems sticky. I kept adding flour and it seemed to get stickier, not the reverse. I gave up on that and moved on to the next step.
6. Roll the dough out with your hands to form a long log.
7. Cut into 1-inch pieces and gently press with a fork to give the traditional ridge effects. Since my dough was still sticky and I was really running late with serving dinner at this point, my gnocchi didn't turn out pretty. They were hard to cut and I couldn't get the fork ridge thing to work properly. I resigned myself to malformed gnocchi. Also, they were giant. I don't think I made my log thin enough.
8. Bring a large pan of water to a boil, add the gnocchi, in small batches, and cook for 1 - 2 minutes. Then remove with a slotted spoon and add more gnocchi to the boiling water. The recipe says to put them in a warmed serving dish, but I just put them in a room temperature dish and covered it with foil.
9. Serve the gnocchi with a generous helping of the pesto on top.
Recipe Review: My gnocchi was demented looking, but still tasty (my grandma said they were the best gnocchi she ever had). If you're going to make the gnocchi yourself, plan on spending a lot of time on it. However, the pesto is super quick and easy. You could buy gnocchi from the store and serve it with the pesto and it would probably be just as awesome (and way quicker). I'm not saying that I wouldn't try to make the gnocchi from scratch again, but maybe only if I really want to impress someone and have all afternoon to spend making them perfect.
Happy eating.
Cheers,
Emma
P.S. This entry's cute photo is brought to you by Izzy, the bathroom cat.
