Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Chestnuts and Sage Butter

 

This was my second time making gnocchi.  Oddly enough, the last time I made gnocchi, I made it with butternut squash, which means I must only be up to making gnocchi when it contains a non-traditional ingredient.  Sometime I should try making plain gnocchi--gnocchi, after all, is a delicious and cost-effective dish that deserves to be made in its most plain state anytime!

I picked this particular recipe because it is so fall-like.  I baked sweet and regular baking potatoes in the oven until they were tender, peeled the potatoes, and then blended them with a bit of egg, flour, cheese, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

Every time I watch someone making gnocchi on TV, I hear that it's so hard to make and so easy to mess up.   That's not necessarily true--my gnocchi came out perfectly pillowy and delicious.  I just think the preparation requires a couple of hints.  I think it's important not to overmix the dough mixture after the flour has been added.  This just makes scientific sense--mixing the dough forms strings of gluten and renders the gnocchi chewy and rubbery.  I think it's also important to know how to form the dough--if you don't know, and are endlessly fooling with the dough to get it into its proper shape, it's also going to get overworked and chewy.  But these are the basic things you need to know.  It's not impossible to make decent gnocchi at home.

Some recipes, such as the one I used, will instruct you to simply press a fork into a piece of cut gnocchi dough.  This is not the way to do it.  Texturizing the gnocchi is a good idea, since more surface area means more space to which delicious sauce can cling.  But just pressing a fork into the dough and leaving it at that will yield a flatly shaped gnocchi.  Rather, you have to use your thumb to not only impress the fork upon the gnocchi, but to roll it up slightly from the fork into an oval shape.  It takes a little bit of practice, but becomes easy after you've done ten or so.

To cook the gnocchi, you slide them into boiling, salted water, and cook until they rise to the top of the cooking liquid.  Then you transfer them to a pan of whatever kind of good sauce you have waiting.  I have had excellent gnocchi in plain marinara sauce, in bleu cheese-tomato sauce, in wild mushroom sauce, and more, but this time the recipe called for a sage-brown butter sauce.  Basically, I cooked some olive oil and butter with sage until the butter was browned, then tossed the gnocchi and some chopped chestnuts in it.  It was very delicious and seasonal dish.