Opinion – Terra Vegana: Tricks for vegan gnocchi to work and be delicious

Anyone who cooks knows: potatoes are not all the same. There are about 4,000 types of potatoes, although only a small range of them are marketable — enough to generate a preference for one type or another, depending on the dish prepared.

For a soft gnocchi, the ideal potato is asterix (with red skin). The higher concentration of starch (compared to the potato) helps to bring the dough to the point of rolling without having to add excess flour for this effect.

In fact, the less flour, the better! A good gnocchi requires the cook to resist the temptation to add wheat and more wheat to the dough — for a pound of potatoes, a cup of flour is enough.

Does the dough seem to be too soft? When rolling and cutting the gnocchi, sprinkle flour as you go through the recipe, always thinking about using only what you need to be able to handle the dough on the countertop.

Although there are no shortcuts to the success of this dish, there are secrets: the asterix potato and using as little flour as possible are two of them. The third: roasting the potatoes instead of cooking them.

The oven allows you to cook the potatoes without soaking them in water, leaving them soft but dry, full of starch, ready to be crushed and transformed into gnocchi that melt in your mouth.

What’s more, by roasting the potatoes whole, we have an almost ready appetizer. After scraping the potato flesh, season the skins with olive oil, salt, rosemary and black pepper. Return to the oven for another 20 minutes and your chips are ready.

Back to the secrets of good gnocchi, this last one is worthy of a restaurant: give the dough a thermal shock. This helps to stop the cooking and make the dough just right, slightly firm on the outside to support the sauce without collapsing, and extremely soft on the inside.

Just remove them from the boiling water with the help of a slotted spoon and dip them in water with plenty of ice. Simple and effective.

If the traditional gnocchi is made with potatoes, flour and egg yolks, in this vegan version we replace the eggs with cornstarch and sunflower oil. With this vegetable combo, we were also able to “bind” the ingredients in the recipe and make the gnocchi, as a student of mine says, “chubby”, or, if we want, unctuous.

A tip: double the recipe and freeze it, after all, it’s not every day that we smear flour on the countertop and ceiling. Just distribute the gnocchi (raw) on a floured board and take it to the freezer.

When they are frozen, transfer them to a bag and when it’s time to eat, just put them in the pan and cook! Gnocchi can be stored for up to three months in the freezer.

Gnocchi Potato

INGREDIENTS

Yield: 4 servings

1 kg of potatoes (preferably asterix type)

1 cup of wheat flour

½ cup + 2 tablespoons cornstarch

100 ml of sunflower oil

1 teaspoon of salt

Flour for sprinkling on the countertop

Ice for thermal shock

FINISHING INGREDIENTS (suggestion)

2 tablespoons 100% vegetable butter

sage leaves

PREPARATION

1. Preheat the oven to 180 º. Bake the potatoes for 40 minutes to 1h10 (until they are tender, depending on the size of the potatoes).
2. When the potatoes are roasted, peel and mash them until you get a puree. Add the other ingredients and mix gently until you get a homogeneous mass.
3. Bring a pan of water to a boil and prepare a large bowl of water for thermal shock.
4. Sprinkle flour on the countertop so the dough doesn’t stick. Separate the dough into six pieces and then stretch each one into a roll shape approximately 1 cm in diameter. Slice the gnocchi and transfer to a flour-dusted tray if you don’t have enough counter space for all the gnocchi.
5. Add plenty of ice to the bowl of water. Take about 15 gnocchi to cook in boiling salted water. As soon as they begin to float, remove with a slotted spoon and transfer to the thermal shock. Repeat the procedure with the rest of the gnocchi.
6. When all the gnocchi are cooked, drain. In a large skillet, melt the butter and lightly fry the sage leaves. Add the gnocchi and do not stir, to seal and mark the dough. When the side of the gnocchi in contact with the skillet is golden, make the sautéing motion for a few minutes to coat all the gnocchi in the butter. serve immediately