Mindy Knows

We had a couple of friends over last night for homemade gnocchi. I say this casually, and while it was most definitely a casual get together with friends, I had some fun putting extra thought and effort into the invitation. Since 2/4 of our dinner guests were relatively new acquaintances  and 2/4 work in technology, I let my inner nerd out by making a quiz (using Google Docs) to help with planning.

It was a hit and quite useful!

As you may recall, we like our gnocchi pan-fried and crispy. I’ve gotta say, Shaun has got it down! By the way, when you come to our place for dinner, you get ‘dinner and a show’ since the bar looks right into the kitchen. It actually works out great when one or both of us is stuck in the kitchen.

Ingredients:

• 3 lbs Yuko Gold Potatoes
• approx 2 cups flour, as needed
• approx 1 tbls salt
• pinch nutmeg
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 cup parmesan

Instructions

1. boil potatoes until cooked – approx 40 minutes
2. peel potatoes while hot
3. put through potato ricer
4. form a volcano with shredded potatoes with 2 eggs beaten in center
5. sprinkle parmesan, nutmeg, and salt over volcano
6. add flour and fold together (use as little flour as possible)
7. form into loaf and cut into sixths
8. roll each piece to approx thickness of thumb
9. cut into 1/2 inch portions
10. roll onto back of fork
11. boil water with salt and oil in it
12. cook gnocchi until they float – approx 1 minute
13. have pan with hot oil ready (we made bacon so shaun used rendered bacon fat this time around)
14. fry until crispy and golden brown

Serve hot. We like ours in pesto cream sauce served with Neto Sausage and a big green salad. So did our friends by the looks of the leftovers – there were none! Serve with white wine – our friends very thoughtfully brought a couple of bottles to pair with the meal, quite perfectly I’d say!

Dinner was followed by whiskey, homemade berry cobbler, and several raucous, ridiculous rounds of Game of Things and Games Against Humanity  that lasted ’til 2a!

Clearly, seeing that the entire bottle was polished off, we really enjoyed the new whiskey we picked up at Costco. It’s a double rye called High West Whiskey and it comes in a really cool bottle. Instead of tossing it, I decided to wash it out and remove the label. For now it’s just decoration, but I’d like to get a couple more to infuse some olive oil or vodka one of these days.