Delicious beginnings... Gnocchi alla Sorrentina

It's happened. After much procrastination, months of good intentions and unfulfilled promises, this blog finally exists! For far too long I've been ranting about starting a food blog, so I'm both relieved and excited that it's gotten off the ground.

I was contemplating writing some sort of introduction here, this being the first post and all, but in the end I hope the food speaks for itself. So without further ado...

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Home-made gnocchi seems like a daunting task. Getting the right balance of potato and flour is a strange and mysterious art. My first and last sojourn into gnocchi-making ended in soggy oversized and misshapen mushballs, which was why I was so excited when the Dancer informed me that she'd enlisted our Italian friend Dr C to help us make the real thing.

We organised a dinner party and invited a few friends to join us for an impromptu cooking lesson. As it turned out, our Doc had only made gnocchi a couple of times before, but she assured us it wouldn't be very difficult, with the only problem being the amount of time it would take.

In the end, she was spot on about the time - 2.5 hours from potato-peeling to pasta-on-plate, which was subsequently demolished in ten minutes. Ten minutes of cheese-meltingly delicious heaven mind you. And even for the preceding 150 minutes, I had plenty of fun rolling the dough and shaping the gnocchi.

Here's the recipe; it's actually ridiculously simple in terms of ingredients, so it's definitely worth a try if you have an evening to spare and friends to enslave...

Gnocchi alla Sorrentina 

Gnocchi:	Pasta Sauce:
1 kg white flour 1 kg potatoes salt to taste	1 large jar (~750 mL) passata 1 block (~ 400 g) mozarella cheese basil to taste

Serves 5-6

1. Boil the potatoes for roughly 20-30 minutes, until they are just cooked enough to mash. Skin the cooked potatoes whilst hot.
2. Create a well of flour and add the skinned potatoes to the centre of the well, and then thoroughly mash the potatoes.

3. Bring in the flour from the sides of the well and knead until a dough forms. The dough will probably be sticky and too wet, so keep adding flour and kneading until a nice and elastic dough forms. The amount of flour can really vary - we used around 600 g probably. Whilst kneading, add salt to taste.

4. Once the dough is ready, take a handful and roll it into ~2-3 cm diameter cylinders. Then cut the cylinders into small ~1 cm wide chunks. Shape the chunks by rolling against the end of a fork. A bit hard to describe, so see the picture to get the best idea.

5. Leave the gnocchi out to dry for 30 mins.
6. Boil the gnocchi until they float, then take them out with a slotted spatula and transfer to a pan. Using a strainer might be a bad idea because the gnocchi are quite delicate.
7. Add passata to the gnocchi and heat until warmed through.
8. Cut mozzarella into 2 cm cubes and add to pasta, followed by torn/chopped basil and stir through briefly to get yummy melted strings of cheese.

Some notes:
- I'm actually not sure what varieties of potatoes are the best for making gnocchi. The ones we bought said "ideal for mashing" and they were floury and seemed to work just fine.