Gnocchi | Kitchen on the Cliff with Giovanna Bellia LaMarca

Gnocchi: soft pillows of potato, made with ingredients you likely have already! Potatoes, flour, and eggs… That’s it! Despite the short list of ingredients, they can be quite finicky… as you’ll see in this video. Don’t let this deter you, let’s make a splash in the kitchen together! 🥔✨🍴

Ingredients
1lb potatoes (yukon gold or russet work)
1 egg
1 cup flour (plus more if needed)
Salt to taste

4 tablespoons butter
1 onion
1 carrot
1 bay leaf
1 pound Italian sausage with casings removed
1 28-ounce can Italian plum tomatoes, pureed
1 cup broth (vegetable, chicken, or beef) or water
salt and pepper to taste
5 sprigs fresh marjoram

Filming and Video Editing by Francesca Sacco

MY NEWEST BOOK: Sicilian Feasts https://www.amazon.com/Sicilian-Feasts-Illustrated-Authentic-Hippocrene/dp/0781814332

The Cooking of Emilia-Romagna: Culinary Treasures of Northern Italy https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-cooking-of-emilia-romagna-giovanna-lamarca/1135644595

Language and Travel Guide to Sicily https://www.amazon.com/Language-Travel-Sicily-English-Italian/dp/078181149X
Available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other book vendors.

WEBSITE: http://giovannalamarca.com/
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/giovannabellialamarca/
MUSIC: Vitti ‘na crozza, Mario Rizzo Concord Music Publishing

My name is Joana and I welcome you to my kitchen on the cliff woo today we’re going to make noi beloved Yi everybody loves them but everybody thinks that they’re too difficult to make they’re not I’m going to show you and simplify it and I hope

That you all try to make them noi are a humble dish the ingredients couldn’t be simpler potatoes flour eggs and some salt so I will take it step by step so that I will encourage you to make noi so to get started we’re going to wash the potatoes in the book I

I boil them and of course you can boil them but since I wrote the book I I pref prefer to steam them because they’re not water logged sometimes they get water logged although I do cook them in their skins but still I prefer to cook them in

The steamer and I have a beautiful steamer I’ll show you all right this is my steamer okay and this is the pot so we’re going to fill the pot with water half full we’re going to put the steamer on top we’re going to wash the potatoes now let’s

Turn gas on we’ll turn it on high until it begins to boil we’re going to put the cover on when it begins to boil and you know that when the steam starts coming out you lower the heat make sure that it keeps boiling and we cook it for 45

Minutes for those of you who’ve been watching Kitchen on the cliff for some time you know that these are my two books today’s recipe comes from the cooking of Amilia Roma which is one of the regions that has a super curb kitchen together with Sicily but that

Book is currently out of print if enough of you request this book I will see what we can do to get it published again so please write in the comments asking for that book thank you very much for inquiring now let’s check on the potatoes these have steamed for 45

Minutes we’re going to check them to be sure that they’re done through and through here we are the knife goes easily in so they’re done the potatoes have cooled about 15 minutes and I could handle them so I’m going to peel them of course they peel so easily it’s much

Less work than peeling them raw you know potatoes are so good you know all you have to do is boil them and slice them and put some good olive oil a Sprinkle of salt and maybe a Sprinkle of oregano if you like it and it’s just delicious

As a matter of fact my mother used to make it all the time used to make a salad she would boil a couple of potatoes and a couple of onions and then cut the onions in quarters and cut the uh potatoes and slices and um dress them

With olive oil salt and a little oregano and they were delicious right we’re going to this is how I do it this I can do because I can put my whole weight it’s like a giant garlic press yes yes so what would you do if you didn’t have one of these if

You didn’t have one of those you can try one of these this is the way it should be done because this makes it very very very small okay let’s do it with the potato masher let’s see if we can get it as fine as this this is the way we used to do

It we just do it over and over again to be sure that they are really really smooth and small so as you do it keep keep Gathering it okay I’m just doing it over and over again okay all right now we’re going to actually make the the

Yi we’re going to add one cup of flour which should be enough but if it’s not enough we’ll add a little bit more and now we’re going to mix it I’m going to give it a very good mix and we want everything to be mixed thoroughly so now we’re going to add a

Little more flour but we’re going to add it A4 of a cup at a time you know recipes can’t be too precise because it depends on how wet the U potatoes are how big the eggs are if the egg is bigger it’ll give more liquid so all of

That has to be taken into account so that’s why in an Italian cookbook it will say QB which means means Quanto Bast and I’ve said this before Quanto Basta means as much as is enough well you know that’s tricky because you have to know by feel how much is enough the

Quality you should look for are that it not be so sticky that you can’t uh uh manipulate the dough I’m going to take some flour and flour the surface so we’re taking one of the pieces of dough and we’re going to make a rope out

Of it okay I’m making a rope the bench has to be well flowered you see it now we take that bench scraper and we’re going to cut it into about 1 in pieces okay so now this is a Cavatelli board you you press lightly and it makes

One Yoko you know with the two fingers you make a hole and then when you pull it through the the board you create ridges which will absorb the sauce in a nice way they’re worth all the trouble that was 13 which is a lucky number in Italian I know 13 is not a

Lucky number in English and stupidly they don’t have a 13th floor in many buildings thinking that because you don’t put the number there’s no 13th floor you can serve these with all kinds of sauces from a bamal sauce to a simple tomato sauce to a marinada sauce to a

Caper sauce to a bolog sauce you can use a pesto if you make pesto genoves it’s the pesto made with basil and Pano and olive oil but if you make the pesto from Sicily it’s going to be made with pistachios equally delicious whatever you have in the pantry you can make a

Sauce out of now one of the things that you can do with this too is after you’ve put whatever sauce you want you can take some breadcrumbs and toast them with a little bit of olive oil and sprinkle them on top our neighbors to the north of Italy do that they put

Breadcrumbs of course if you engage your grandchildren your neighbors your guests your friends and you make a party out of it have everybody help making them and then make a a lovely big platter of these Things to dress our uh potato noi I’m going to make a very special sauce it’s called margarum sauce from Emilia Roma and it was taught to me by Chef Nadia monuki so uh I would like to make this in our honor so we need 4 tablespoons of

Butter which equals to A half a stick this is from Emilia Roma the butter is abundant we start with a batuto in this case it’s onion and carrot now I’ve already cut the carrot in four now I hold it and I just cut it directly into

The pot I can do this faster like this against my thumb than I can in a cutting board this is the tuto which means the initial vegetables that you fry to get maximum flavor for your sauce we’re going to give it a quick mix and let the butter work its

Magic this sauce is made with sausage and the next thing I’m going to do is to take the uh casing off the sausage okay taking the the casing off the sausage right I’m adding a fresh bay leaf to the batuto and we’ll let it let it cook in

The butter remember we cook with all our senses so we wait to smell the bay leaf all right I’m smelling are you smelling the bay leaf I’m smelling it for you okay now we’re going to add the sausage we’ve taken it out of the Casey

We’re going to add it to the pot and we’re going to stir and sort of separated the meat has the brown and particularly when it makes little bits that stick to the bottom that’s all flavor here’s a tool that is made to separate meat when you make any kind of

Meat sauce where you want the the chopped meat or the sausage to be separated so you use this very very Nifty now this calls for tomato puree these are peeled whole tomatoes if I want puree I put it in the food processor and I puree it I don’t feel

Like putting it in the processor today so I’m just just going to to crush it right in the can I’m going to put this in this is now my spoon holder we’re going to add one cup of beef broth chicken broth or water we need salt and pepper to taste so we’re

Going to add a teaspoon of salt okay we’re going to add some pepper keep it on high until it boils and now we’re going to lower the heat to a simmer and we’re going to cover it and we’re going to cook it for 45 minutes so here’s a margam so what you

Do is you hold the stem at the tip and you strip it this way you see what I’m doing and that way you get none of the tough stem it’s been 45 minutes we put the water up for the noi I’m going to add the margarum leaves to the sauce oh I

Can smell it again so the water is boiling once the water boils you add the salt it’s okay if you add the salt before but uh know that if you add it before it’ll take longer for the water to boil the water should be like sea

Water now we take the noi you see why we use the towel I’ll show you now we’re going to add them come On woo almost okay the Y are in the boiling water the water is going to come to a boil again and the noi are going to come to the surface so what we’re going to do is as they come to the surface we’re going to fish them out as soon as they

Come to the surface they’re done we don’t put these in a colander because they’re too delicate we take them out with a skimmer okay we can turn that off we’re going to take the bay leaf out okay here’s a bay leaf we’re going to put the sauce on

Top now you know how to make Yi so these are noi with margarum sauuce of course noi are made with potatoes it looks like pasta but it’s not really pasta if you have a problem pronouncing Yi kind of ignore the G it’s a nasal Andi you want more sauce yes thank you

Oh where’s where’s the pan okay in Italy people often say the best eating is in ail Roman or at your grandmother’s house now these can be eaten with a fork or a spoon that’s why the the marriages lasted 60 years because he uses a spoon

And I use a fork and we agree what is it we agree not to this no we agree to disagree to disagree she drinks tea with milk I like tea with l I like the dark meat of chicken and he likes the white meat of chicken y very good very

Tasty just like I remember thank you for watching I hope that you try makingi I hope you like them and this makes potatoes a little more special oh I can taste the marom the margom you know we put it at the very end we didn’t cook it all we

Wanted to do was to release the aroma and I can taste it right in in my head Ciao