Gnocchi

This was the first time I had made gnocchi.  It's pretty simple, really.  I tried Piedmontese gnocchi, which has just potato, flour and salt - no egg.  Egg supposedly makes the gnocchi denser and chewier.  The key to really good gnocchi, I think, is balance between firmness and fluffiness.  You don't want the dumplings to be rubbery, but mushy gnocchi is even worse.  I think mine could have been slightly chewier, but they had plenty of definition, and the lightness you get without eggs is very nice.  They were still really filling, but not quite as heavy as the really dense gnocchi you sometimes get.

I started out by boiling one large and two medium-small potatoes.

Once they were soft, I mashed them very thoroughly with a fork, since I don't have a vegetable mill.  The fork worked fine, really, and it didn't take too long.  Once they are mashed, leave the potatoes out to dry for a bit.

After they had dried, I added flour and salt and kneaded until the mixture was smooth.

To form the gnocchi, pull out a chunk of the potato dough and roll it into a cylinder about as thick as a thumb.  Then cut individual dumplings from the log.

To finish, hold a fork horizontally and roll the dumplings over the tines.  The technique is a bit hard to describe, and I'm not sure I've completely mastered it, but it is easy enough to do an adequate job after trying once or twice.  I was pretty satisfied with the shape of mine.

I sauced the gnocchi very simply.  Just butter browned with a little garlic, salt, pepper and parmesan.

For the second batch I added some (over)toasted pine nuts, which also went well.