Potatoes In Another Light
Pan-roasted ribeye steak with potato gnocchi in a sage and brown butter sauce
I hit up Trader Joe’s with Joce a few days ago and picked up some steak and ready-made potato gnocchi. What is gnocchi, you ask? Wiki has the deets:
Gnocchi (pronounced /’ɲɔkki/) is the Italian word for dumplings; in Italian, gnocchi is the plural of gnocco, which literally means “lump”. They can be made of potato, semolina (durum wheat), flour, or ricotta cheese (with or without spinach). One variety, gnocchi di pane, popular in the Friuli and Trentino-South Tyrol regions, is made from bread crumbs. Although the dish is Italian, the word comes from a Germanic word for a knot (as in wood), possibly because of its short, squat shape.
Gnocchi is relatively easy (all you have to do is try it once to perfect it) and cheap to make (it’s just potato, flour and 1 egg). That being said, when you’re on your way home from work and all you wanna do is eat… I’d say getting freshly prepared (not dried) gnocchi isn’t *that* bad.
I just boiled the package’s contents for a few minutes while I cooked 3/4 stick of butter and a few sage leaves over medium-low heat until the butter turned brown and smelled all nutty and delicious. Once the butter was ready, I just mixed the dumplings and the sauce and topped with some freshly grated Parmesan cheese! YAY.
Sage + brown butter sauce is the traditional way of cooking gnocchi, and I think it lends itself to the American palette quite well (think baked potatoes with tons of butta). It’s different, but not *weird* different… it’s just another application of ingredients that you’re used to. It’s a great way to introduce a new “starch” to your meals. Chef Thomas Keller from Bouchon doesn’t really use many starches in his bistro-styled restaurant except for pommes frites (french fries) and gnocchi… so that should say a lot on how versatile this “pasta” really is.
Try it, you’ll like it! 
~Spec
