Gnocchi alla vodka
How to make everyone's favourite potato pillows of joy in just 3 ingredients
Cooking can often feel automatic & familiar, but sometimes I make something and remember that cooking is magic (more accurately chemistry, but magic sounds more fun!)
Gnocchi is one of those things - where potato meets pasta, the queen of carbs. The stuff available in the supermarkets can be lovely if you’re in a time crunch, but a recipe to make it yourself is something worth having up your sleeve - not only is the result far superior to what you can buy, but it’s really fun and satisfying to roll up your sleeves and make something so delicious out of so few ingredients.
Gnocchi dough can feel very wet - the main issue you may face is the dough feeling too sticky & wet to handle and roll. The key thing to think about when making the dough is using enough flour so that you can handle the dough but not so much flour that will make the gnocchi tough.
Baking the potatoes is the preferred method over boiling as it reduces the moisture of the potatoes, allowing us to use less flour and enabling the dough to come together more easily.
For this recipe, I’m blanching the gnocchi in boiling water to cook it through, then shocking in cold water before frying in oil & butter to create a lovely crisp exterior to the finished result - a really lovely texture.
There are endless things you could pair with gnocchi but today, I’m making a “vodka sauce” - a creamy, tomato sauce with a hint of chilli which uses a splash of vodka, which is said to improve the overall seasoning of the dish. This is a completely optional ingredient and, when omitted, doesn’t make that much difference, in my opinion!
So let’s get into it - I’m excited to share this one!!