Gnocchi

Slightly over a decade ago I worked in Marlborough, Massachusetts and had an actual hour for my lunch hour.  There was an excellent little Italian place near my workplace named Linguine's, which had only opened up a year or two before.  You wouldn't know it from the crowd that packed the place at lunch.  It's still there, still serving excellent food at generally reasonable prices, and still a place I think of any time I pass within ten miles of the place.

Though they make a very good Boston thin-crust pizza, the dish I loved most was their gnocchi -- I would always get the dish in their tomato sauce with fresh mozzarella and basil.  I tried to recreate it a few times at home, but never successfully.  Either I used an overly sweetened jarred sauce, or I didn't melt the mozzarella enough, or I didn't have fresh basil or fresh mozzarella on hand, or some combination.  A few years ago I had to cut down my gnocchi consumption, as these lovely miniature pasta-and-potato dumplings are usually heavily loaded with salt.

A couple of months ago I picked up a four-pack of De Cecco gnocchi at Costco.  I felt that with this gnocchi I stood a chance of making it properly at home.  The sauce I made earlier this week -- I did end up using a stick blender to smooth it out -- combined with the leftover fresh basil I didn't use in the sauce, made me ready to give the dish a whirl.  I figured that the low salt content of the sauce would help balance out the high content in the gnocchi and the moderate amount in the mozzarella.

I started heating the sauce and the mozzarella around the same time I put the water for the gnocchi in the pot.  It's a good thing I did, as I finally got the mozzarella to melt.  I tossed the cooked gnocchi with the mozzarella-laden sauce and fresh basil leaves, and enjoyed.

Now this said, the subtleties of the sauce were not properly brought out in this dish.  If I do this again anytime soon, a simpler red sauce or a vodka cream sauce will work fine.

If you want to try making this at home, here are my tips:

• Give the mozzarella at least 10 minutes to cook in the sauce, preferably closer to 15, and put the fresh basil on top about the same time you put in the mozzarella
• Get or make a relatively smooth red sauce, but avoid sweetened sauces
•  use an appropriately-sized skillet for the sauce, not a saucepot
• Use 4-6 oz. of fresh mozzarella and a about pint of sauce per 16-17.6 oz. package of gnocchi
• If you have good parmesan, romano or grana pradano cheese, anywhere from 1/4 to 1 oz. of it will add some good flavor, but it is not required
• Do not overcook or undercook your gnocchi
• If your gnocchi says to salt the water before cooking but you have a low-sodium diet, don't put the salt in the water.  They suggest that for taste purposes

This isn't a dish I recommend for every day, not that I have many I do suggest for daily consumption, but it is mighty tasty.