Gnocchi Time

While grappling with my inner turmoil and transformation, I also indulged in a healthy dose of nostalgia over the weekend by whipping up an Italian feast for my closest amici. The fresh gnocchi made with local potatoes turned out to be a delicious success, soaking up the sauce studded with sun-dried pomodoro from Sicily. There were also the bruschettas topped with Marco's inspired recipe of tuna, tomatoes and olives, accompanied by some fresh rocket salad. And we licked up the last bit of decadent cakes from a local Italian cafe and munched on the Tuscan Cantucci biscotti dipped in Vin Santo sweet wine which I lovingly hand-carried back... ahh.

Here's the gnocchi recipe (for 4 persons) which was traded from Iris at Casa Lanzarotti in exchange for the formulas to my agar-agar and chicken rice chilli sauce. For those who are not familiar with gnocchi (pronounced 'niok-kee), it is a pasta made from potatoes or semolina. For more info, you can visit this useful link http://italianfood.about.com/od/gnocchi/

Iris' Glorious Gnocchi
Ingredients
800g potatoes (use hardy local potatoes for best results)
1 egg
1 tablespoon butter (optional but butter makes everything taste better!)
150g plain flour

Method
1. Boil potatoes till cooked (about 20mins), peel and mash them finely while they are warm
2. Add egg and butter to the warm mash, and mix them together with hands (based on my experience, you can add a pinch of salt at this point to make the gnocchi tastier)
3. Add flour slowly in batches and mix it into the dough till it is not too sticky to roll
4. With clean hands dusted with flour, roll a small batch of dough into a thin (thumb-width) length on a floured surface and cut it up into 2cm pieces with a butter knife
5. Be sure to separate the gnocchi and place them on non-grease baking paper. At cooking time, all you have to do is slip the gnocchi into a pot of boiling water (add some salt) and scoop them up when they float to the surface
*Note: It is best to cook the gnocchi fresh but you can also keep them refridgerated or even frozen untill cooking time.

Ready... Action!
- It is molto importante to prepare the sauce before boiling the gnocchi! Like they say, the pasta doesn't wait for you, you have to wait for the pasta!
- There are a lot of sauces which you can try for gnocchi but you can't go wrong with these deliciously simple, foolproof traditional recipes:
(A) Basic tomato sauce - just fry garlic, onions, chopped tomatoes and basil
(B) Throw in minced meat and even bacon to (A) and voila! - a ragu sauce
(C) Sage and butter sauce - just add chopped fresh sage to holt melted butter
(D) Pesto sauce with pinenuts - add toasted pinenuts to pesto sauce
(E) Try a thick rich cheese sauce made from Gorgonzola (only for cheese lovers!)