Since then, I have scoured my city looking for perfect specimens of the pudgy, potato-y pasta—you’d be amazed (or maybe not) at how many gluey, heavy, Bubble-Yum-like examples there are to be found, often drowning in too much sauce like little leaden blocks dragging some poor chef’s unforeseen pasta-making fate to the bottom of a marinara ocean. But the soft, pillowy great ones are (sigh) transcendent. One of my favorite examples comes from Sfoglia, the Upper-East-Side-of-Manhattan outpost of the beloved Nantucket original. I can never, ever seem to get enough of Ron and Colleen Suhanosky’s myriad pasta dishes at this cozy, little spot—freshly made tagliatelle; papardelle; and orecchiette; rich, gorgeous risotto; and, of course, that gnocchi. So when the Suhanosky’s book, Pasta Sfoglia: From Our Table to Yours, More Than 100 Fresh, Seasonal Pasta Dishes landed on my desk, I decided to put my money where my critic’s mouth is: If I was going to be such a blow-hard about gnocchi, the least I could do was (finally) attempt to make it.
Of course, I had to go and pick the more difficult version of an already tricky pasta—squash gnocchi. Squash, says Suhanosky, isn’t as starchy as a potato, so the addition of it into potato gnocchi makes it all the more difficult to wrestle. True enough—within minutes after ricing my Idaho potatoes and pumpkin (I opted for this instead of the recipe-recommended butternut squash for obvious reasons: I had one on my stoop) and mixing them with flour, an egg, salt, pepper, and nutmeg, my hands were twice their normal size caked with sticky, stubborn goo. Yikes! Fortunately, I’m no stranger to dough, and this to me said, “Add more flour!,” which is exactly what I did and what Suhonosky recommended in a follow-up email for some post-gnocchi-attempt tips: “I would have done the same thing and told you to add more flour, especially because the pumpkin has more moisture in it,” he said. “But there is still a fine line—you don't want to add too much flour but you just have to be aware of the dough.” This is something he stresses often in the book—get to know the feel of the dough. While that might sound a little, “Be one with the Force, Luke!”, it’s true. You don’t want it to be sticky; you want it to be smooth, soft, and pliable; the more you practice, the better. And you may well need to try more than a few times before getting it right—Suhonosky did. To feel better about my stumbling gnocchi skills, I asked him how long it took before he felt he’d figured it out. “It took probably five or six years.” Ah, now that’s gnocchi love.
Butternut Squash (or Pumpkin!) Gnocchi
- 2 to 2 1/2 lb butternut squash (I used pumpkin)
- 1 1/2 lbs Idaho potatoes
- 2 cups all-purpose flour (plus I used at least an extra cup)
- 1 egg
- 2 tsp kosher salt
- 1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
- 1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
- rice flour for dusting (says Ron: "Use Rice Flour to dust them after you cut them because rice flour holds the least amount of moisture.")
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Wrap the squash in aluminum foil. Baker until a knife passes easily through the thickest part; about 1 1/2 hours.
- Gently boil the potatoes, skins on, in a large pot of water until knife easily passes through the thickest part. Remove from pot and let cool to the touch, but don't let them get completely cold.
- Wrap the 'taters in a kitchen towel or napkin, and rub the skin off and discard it. Pass the potatoes through a ricer (or food mill fitted with a medium-hole disk) into a medium-sized bowl.
- When squash is cool, remove seeds and skin, quarter, measure out 2 cups, and pass it through the food mill. (You will, in all likelihood, have squash leftover; I'm going to make bread or soup with it.)
- Spread the flour onto a dry, clean, large surface. Place the 'taters and squash on top; add the egg, salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Use your hands to gently knead the dough into a 10-by-8-inch log. Let it sit for 2 minutes. (TIP: Keep at least a couple of cups of flour standing by so you're not caught with gooey hands and the need to scoop more out of your bag or flour container—learn from my mistakes, people!)
- Dust a dry work surface with the rice flour. Cut the log into 4 equal pieces. Roll each with your hands into a 1-inch thick rope. Cut off 1/2-inch pieces. Store the gnocchi on a rice flour-covered baking sheet until ready to use. Dust with more rice flour.
- To cook the gnocchi: heat a pot of water to boiling; add the gnocchi and allow them to rise to the top of the boiling water, then time out one extra minute, as per Suhonasky's suggestion (he's right). ALSO: I found those 4 pieces were each too big to roll out in any kind of way that I could grapple with; I recommend cutting the pieces in half and making the ropes out of a smaller pieces.
