Those potato-based pasta pillows that at their best are light and bouncy, though more often then not come off as leaden and heavy. Well, those gnocchi are another story for another time. If you ask me, they're tastier, as well. I often talk about how learning the basic techniques behind good cooking is far more important than mastering a specific recipe. Once you've mastered the basics of the French-style hot water, flour, and egg-based dough, you've got the chops to pull off countless recipes.
You can pipe decorative logs and fill them with pastry cream to make eclairs. You can sandwich dollops of chantilly or ice cream in it to make cream puffs or profiteroles. Or, you can do them my favorite way: gently simmered, then fried or broiled until crisp and golden brown with a light, airy center. Here's how to make 'em. While the ratios of ingredients differ, the process of making Parisian gnocchi is identical, no matter who you ask.
First, boil water and butter in a saucepan, then dump in flour all at once and stir it vigorously with a wooden spoon until a smooth ball of dough forms. After the dough comes together in a ball and begins to gently steam an indication that the flour in it is fully hydrated and cooked , finish by adding eggs one at a time and beating that dough like your life depends on it, in order to incorporate that egg without letting it curdle.
I've lost more than one long-term companion to the wooden spoon gods performing this action. You end up with a sticky, paste-like dough that holds itself together just well enough to be piped from a piping bag or a zipper-lock bag with the corner removed. You pipe the gnocchi out and cut them with a sharp knife directly into the water a few at a time, then let them poach until they float to the surface for a few moments before fishing them out.
Finally, the poached gnocchi can be eaten either as-is, or finished by frying or broiling to crisp up their exteriors. But before we get there, let's talk a bit about how hot water doughs work. Parisian gnocchi are somewhat of an oddity in the Western repertoire, in that they're made with a hot water dough—much like Chinese-style dumpling or stretched noodle dough. With most Western breads and pastries, cold or room temperature liquid is added to flour before kneading it.
There are two kinked proteins in flour, glutenin , and gliadin. Get them lubricated and rub them around enough through mechanical action like kneading , and they tend to stretch out and bind with each other, forming the stretchy protein matrix known as gluten.
Gluten is what gives dough structure, and the more it's kneaded and worked, the tighter and more elastic it becomes. A ball of well-kneaded cold water dough will spring back if you press it and contract if you stretch it. This is why, for example, pizza dough is extremely hard to roll out until it's had at least a couple hours to rest and allow this gluten to relax.
A hot water dough, on the other hand, works differently. By adding flour directly to boiling water, you actually end up not only denaturing the proteins, but smashing them into small pieces. Some degree of gluten can still form, but because cooked proteins aren't nearly as stretchy or clingy as raw ones, you won't get anywhere near the elasticity of a cold-water dough.
Adding butter and other fats to the dough will further diminish its gluten-forming abilities. The beauty of a hot water dough is that, as you can see, it doesn't bounce back as much as a cold water dough does.
This is important: as the gnocchi go through their primary poaching step in simmering water, water vapor and trapped gases will expand, causing the gnocchi to inflate slightly. This change in density caused by expanding gases is what causes them to gently float to the surface of the pot as they poach.
If we were to try and make gnocchi with a cold water dough, one with plenty of springy, elastic gluten, we'd have a heck of a time getting those gnocchi hot enough to expand to the point where they come out nice and airy; Instead, we'd end up with dense, chewy nubs that taste more like damp bread. With our tender, easy-to-shape hot water dough, however, the stretching is easy, and, what's more, the gnocchi keep their stretched-out shape even after they begin to cool, ensuring that they stay light and tender no matter how we choose to finish them off.
Remember how I said that pretty much all gnocchi recipes are identical? All requests should include the restaurant's name and address or business card, as well as your name and address. Choux pastry. White truffle mornay. Method Main. For choux pastry, bring milk, butter and ml water to a simmer in a saucepan over medium heat. Reduce heat to low, add flour and beat continuously with a wooden spoon until a smooth dough forms and pulls away from sides of pan minutes. Transfer to a heatproof bowl, add herbs and mustard, stir until combined.
Add eggs, one at a time, beating continuously until incorporated, then transfer mixture to a piping bag with a 2cm plain nozzle.
Bring a large saucepan of salted water to the boil over high heat, pipe pastry into boiling water, cutting with a small sharp knife at 2cm intervals while piping to make gnocchi-shaped pieces.
Cook in batches until gnocchi float to the top minutes , remove with a slotted spoon. Drain well, place on a tray lined with baking paper, cool, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
When made incorrectly, they are paste disguised as pasta. No thanks. We would rather have foolproof pillows every time. That is where nontraditional gnocchi comes in. The result: impossibly delicious—and impossibly easy—gnocchi, crispy on the outside, silky-smooth on the inside, and ready to be topped with whatever you like.
Bread flour. Milk , whole. Butter , plus more for searing. Salt , kosher. Black pepper. Nutmeg , grated, optional. Egg s , about 6 medium. Parmesan , grated. Oil , as needed. Stand mixer. Disposable piping bag. Piping tip 12 round. Timing 1 hr. Yield 8 servings. Well, so, the French pastry dough dates back to the sixteenth-century.
In place of a raising agent, the recipe uses moisture to create steam during cooking and puff up the pastry. Super cool, oui? Jeez, how many types of gnocchi are there? So many!
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