Chestnut Gnocchi (potato dumplings with chestnut flour)

Let's celebrate the Autumn and the beginning of winter! These are very easy to make, have a delicate flavour and are 100% a rare find in any restaurant or food shop, your guests will be impressed with very little effort on your part!

Ingredients:

500gr old potatoes (roosters are better)

175gr chestnut flour

1 tbsp salt

1 large egg yolk

Some semolina for the counter top

Method:

TIP: First of all you'll notice that here the egg yolk isn't optional: this is because chestnut flour is gluten free, so you do need a binder during cooking.

TIP: Homemade gnocchi will breakdown during cooking when either of these happen:

• The potatoes are too humid

• You add too much flour

• You work the dough too much

The last two are easily avoided, but for the first one there is a trick: pick old potatoes if possible (avoid baby ones or the new crop), and choose either of these methods to cook:

• Whole, in their skin (washed) boiling in plenty of salted water - then peel them as hot as possible but without burning yourself

• Skinned and in pieces but in the microwave, covered with a perforated lid (or cling film with plety of holes)

So, let's start!

• Cook the potatoes, then drain well if boiling and mash them well as soon as possible (if you have a potato ricer it's even better)

• Once mashed wait until they become just cool enough to handle with bare hands and they release some of the steam

TIP: This recipe works well only if you are working with very warm potatoes

• Put the mashed potatoes on your table, add the salt and the egg and start mixing the dough.

• Add the chestnut flour a little bit at a time and stop adding flour (quantities for the flour do change according to the age and wetness of the potatoes).

• Do not overwork the dough: stop as soon as it's smooth and doesn't crumble any longer (2-3 mins)

• Wrap tightly the dough in tinfoil to keep it warm and wet

• Spread some semolina on the table

• Cut out a thick slice of dough and start working it onto the table giving it the shape of a narrow (1cm) cilinder

• Make sure to roll the cilinder well into the semolina

• Cut the cilinder in 1cm pieces, then shape them to obtain the classic oblong shape, lightly mixing them with semolina (shake off the excess)

• Now you have the choice to leave the gnocchi as they are, per the main picture above, or to make the classic ridges and shape by using a "rigagnocchi" (a ridged board used for gnocchi)

• If you use that, just take a shaped piece, run it lightly over the board from the top down with your finger making an imprint on the side were no ridges will be created.

• Keep making the gnocchi, one little cilinder at a time, and always keep the rest of the dough wrapped in tinfoil

TIP: Now it's not the time to take a break, the dough must be quite warm when you work it, so don't leave it time to cool down

TIP: Gnocchi cannot wait, you either cook them straight away, or you freeze them and then cook them from frozen. If you are freezing them, put them on a chopping board in the freezer until hardened, then bag them

Cooking:

• First of all ensure your sauce is ready and at hand

• Bring plenty of salted water to the boil and put all your gnocchi into your pot

TIP: As chestnut flour is quite sweet, make sure there is enough salt in the water (I add double than normal)

• Homemade gnocchi cook extremely quickly: be ready with a slotted spoon and drain them from the water as soon as they come to the surface, and put them into your sauce pot

• Continue to drain them all with the slotted spoon, then mix delicately in your sauce pot and serve

Sauces:

I find that Chestnut Gnocchi are at their best if served either with a mushroom cream sauce, or with a walnut cream sauce (or a mushroom + walnut cream sauce!)