We had a great opportunity during a visit to Margaritelli Winery. In addition to great wines, we had a lesson on making flatbread and gnocchi. It didn’t take long for me to dive into the mixing of ingredients for the flatbread. After mixing the dough, we placed the dough under glass bowls until we were ready to cook it on a circular skillet.

I’ve previously have seen videos of making gnocchi, it looked difficult. However Jennifer made the process easy to follow. So that I would burn the directions in my head, I participated making the gnocchi from start to finish. Jennifer measured the ingredients: potatoes, flour and grated Parmesan and Romano cheese. The potatoes were pealed, previously cook with skins on so they would not get water logged. The potatoes were then put through a rice grader. Flour and water were added along with a packet of a substance that resembled yeast. The mixture was mixed.

We took a section of the dough and began to roll it with our fingertips. After my roll was about 3/4 “ thick, I chopped the roll quickly in about 3/4“ sections. Jennifer demonstrated two methods to roll the gnocchi. I tried both methods. One is to turn a fork upside down and place a piece of dough, cut side down. onto the fork. With the palm of my hand, I rolled the dough off the fork. The other method was to use a grooved pice of wood and follow the same procedure. The gnocchi pieces were placed on a floured tray.

Salted water in a pan was brought to almost the boiling point. The gnocchi dough was place into the water. After it cooked it floated to the top. With a slotted spoon I moved the floating cooked gnocchi to a hot skillet that had melted butter and spices. I continued to add the dough to the water, cook the gnocchi and move to the skillet with water.

The gnocchi was served in the butter and spice sauce. This was delicious and easy to make. The more I practice the better I’ll become at cutting the rolled dough in consistent sized pieces and rolling off a fork. I can also experiment with different sauces. This cooking demonstration was more of a hands on class for me and I plan to put my new skills to use.

Cheers,
Terry