[Sca-cooks] Gnocchi, or period drop dumplings

Christiane christianetrue at earthlink.net
Wed Sep 22 13:59:42 PDT 2004


Thanks for providing this!

<snip> 

To make and cook maccaroni in many ways for lenten days. 
Take a pound of flour and a pound of grated bread passed through the finest sieve.  Bind everything together with boiling water and olive oil mixed with a little saffron. Make pasta that is not too firm, but well mixed on the table (knead well) and when it has lost its heat make the gnocchi that is maccaroni above the cheese grater (*1) and put them to cook in boiling water with a little salt.  When they are cooked strain and put them in a dish of clay or wood and put above a garlic sauce made of walnuts ground, garlic cloves, pepper and crumb of bread that has been soaked in hot water.  Mix everything together and serve them with pepper and cinnamon above.  But if one wants to make macaroni drawn out enough, make the pasta more firm and leave it to rest as a sheet on the table and cut it with a sperone (*2) into square (four cornered) strips and cook them in water and salt and serve them as it is written above.  And if you want they can also be served covered with green sau!
 ce. 
(*1) - The noodles are made in the first instance the way that noodles for paprikash are often made.  A soft dough is grated into boiling water.  This would yield small dumpling style pasta shapes. 
(*2) - The noodles can also be made like tagliatelle.  The pasta is made more firm, rolled out into a sheet and cut with a Sperone.  Scappi carries a picture of a "Sperone da pasticiero" - literal translation spur of the pasta chef.  It has a curved knife on one end, a handle in the middle and what looks like a fluted cutting wheel on the other end.  It would therefore allow you to make very fancy cut pasta. 


Today's gnocchi do not contain any leavening -- although "gnocchi" today mean the frozen kind that contain potato flour. But a friend of mine makes gnocchi with flour, ricotta, and egg -- and no baking powder. They're dropped into a pot of boiling water, drained, and served with sauce. The flour, cheese, and egg recipe someone else cited earlier could also seem to be period gnocchi. 

So, is there a period ricotta-cheese-based gnocchi recipe out there? I'm just curious.

Damn. Now I want some gnocchi.

Gianotta







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