{"id":4571,"date":"2018-04-04T09:00:03","date_gmt":"2018-04-04T15:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/villasentieri.com\/?post_type=recipe&p=4571"},"modified":"2026-09-02T10:58:45","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T17:58:45","slug":"gnocchi-di-patate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/villasentieri.com\/index.php\/2018\/04\/04\/gnocchi-di-patate\/","title":{"rendered":"Gnocchi di Patate (Potato Gnocchi)"},"content":{"rendered":"

April 4, 2018<\/span><\/p>\n

My father didn\u2019t like gnocchi.<\/p>\n

As far as I know, it is the only food he refused to eat.<\/p>\n

It was all about the texture.\u00a0 Mind you, this is from a man who\u2019s comfort food was a BIG bowl of cold mashed potatoes with buttermilk poured over top.<\/p>\n

I understand the texture thing but for me the offending texture is slimy\u2026like Jello (or cold mashed potatoes with buttermilk).<\/p>\n

The next worst texture is hot cereal.\u00a0 It\u2019s not as bad as Jello but it\u2019s not a favorite.\u00a0 It took a long time for me to enjoy polenta because it has a texture just like hot cereal.\u00a0 I think my dislike for hot cereal has diminished as I\u2019ve gotten older and I can probably now keep Jello down, which as a kid wasn\u2019t always the case.<\/p>\n

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But gnocchi?\u00a0 In the pantheon of foods, gnocchi reign supreme.\u00a0 They are my favorite food.\u00a0 Not to be morose, but they would be my death row meal (assuming a prison chef could make them like my mother with her pepperoni sauce!).<\/p>\n

The pepperoni sauce is an interesting twist.<\/p>\n

Since my father didn\u2019t like gnocchi, we didn\u2019t have them when he was home for dinner.\u00a0 My father worked out of town from time to time, so there were weeknight meals where he wasn\u2019t around.<\/p>\n

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The back of a fork is commonly used to imprint ridges on gnocchi but a gnocchi board does a much better job<\/strong><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My mother would freeze her Sunday sauce, which was made with large pieces of pork.\u00a0 Sometimes a container of sauce wouldn\u2019t have any meat.\u00a0 A common Italian approach to adding a bit of protein to a meal of pasta with red sauce is to simmer some shelled hard-boiled eggs in the sauce for a little while and serve them with the pasta.<\/p>\n

My mother did that, but she also would take pieces of pepperoni, pierce them with a fork in a few places, boil them for about 20 minutes to render some of the fat and to soften the meat, and then add them to sauce to simmer for half-an-hour or so.<\/p>\n

That sauce, which only appeared on weeknights from leftover Sunday sauce is my favorite sauce for my favorite food!<\/p>\n

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Let\u2019s face it, pepperoni is an American creation.\u00a0 To be sure, it\u2019s a riff on any number of Italian regional salame piccante (hot salami). \u00a0In fact, you can\u2019t get a pepperoni pizza in Italy but you can get a pizza with slices of salame piccante.<\/p>\n

It took a while for our Italian relatives to wrap their heads around pepperoni.\u00a0 In Italian, pepperoni are peppers not a cured meat product.\u00a0 The word is also plural, not singular.\u00a0 Americans often adopt the plural form of an Italian word (whether changing the meaning or not) and then treat it like it\u2019s singular.<\/p>\n

Consider panini.\u00a0 One sandwich is panino.\u00a0 More than one are panini.\u00a0 The same is true with gnoccho and gnocchi or raviolo and ravioli.\u00a0 Americans tend to say paninis and raviolis (fingers on blackboard screeching sound) if they mean more than one.\u00a0 We don\u2019t really have a rule about this as far as I know.\u00a0 It\u2019s just random.\u00a0 Or so it appears to me.<\/p>\n

Italian, on the other hand, has a very clear rule when adopting foreign words.\u00a0 The singular form of the word becomes the Italian word.\u00a0 That word is use for both the singular and the plural, with the adjective changing to indicate more than one.<\/p>\n

Take bar, for example.\u00a0 The \u201cItalian\u201d word for bar is bar.\u00a0 (This is a critical bit of information that one learns early when taking Italian lessons.)\u00a0 If you\u2019re going to the bar, in Italian you would say \u201cil bar\u201d (the bar). \u00a0If you\u2019re going out for a night of pub-crawling to many bars you would say \u201ci bar\u201d (the bars).<\/p>\n

Now, you might ask yourself, when you would ever eat just one gnoccho.\u00a0 Gnocchi translates as dumplings.\u00a0 So if you had a large American or Eastern European dumpling, it would be a gnoccho, and you might have just one.\u00a0 Today, however, we are making small gnocchi, and one is never enough.<\/p>\n

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If you have a favorite family recipe and a bit of a story to tell, please email me at santafecook@villasentieri.com<\/a> and we can discuss including it in the blog. I am expanding the scope of my blog to include traditional recipes from around the country and around the world. If you haven\u2019t seen Bertha\u2019s Flan<\/a> or Melinda\u2019s Drunken Prunes<\/a>, take a look.\u00a0 They will give you an idea of what I\u2019m looking for.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Gnocchi di Patate (Potato Gnocchi)<\/h2>\n
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There are some very strong opinions about making gnocchi. The first is whether they should be very soft or somewhat firm. That preference tends to drive other decisions but sometimes in different directions. My husband\u2019s Great Aunt Juliana liked soft gnocchi so she did not use eggs. She insisted that the gnocchi should be mixed while the potatoes were still hot, though other folks who like soft gnocchi use the potatoes after they\u2019ve cooled and lost some of their moisture so less flour is needed. I like firmer gnocchi, so I use eggs. I also let the potatoes cool (as my mother did) because 1) it\u2019s easier on the fingertips and 2) the trivial amount of moisture lost or not by cooling or not is no competition for the addition of eggs.<\/div>\n
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Prep Time <\/span>5 minutes<\/span><\/span> mins<\/span><\/span><\/div>
Cook Time <\/span>1 hour<\/span><\/span> hr<\/span><\/span><\/div>
Total Time <\/span>1 hour<\/span><\/span> hr<\/span> 5 minutes<\/span><\/span> mins<\/span><\/span><\/div><\/div>\n
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Servings: <\/span>8<\/span> people<\/span><\/span><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Ingredients
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