Gnocchi

My grandmom is an interesting lady.  She once told a mobster to stop calling my grandfather or she'd call the police, she can out dance anyone I know, and she got bored with making her own bootleg limoncello before it was hip to home brew.

When we were younger and my family drove down to spend a few days or she came up to our house, suitable grandmother/grandchild activities included happy hour while listening to the Rat Pack and drinking Shirley Temples and playing poker.  I could tell you what hands beat a full house before I made it to second grade.  After my sister and brother and I went to bed, my parents would stay up and play cards with her, too.

It's not that my grandmom doesn't do things considered typical grandmother things for her generation.  In fact, she excels at sewing, her house is always immaculate, and she once attempted to teach me to crochet while she was up for a weekend visit.  I wasn't an apt enough pupil, and we stopped to play cards.

She did, however, enlist our help in the kitchen, whether we were visiting her or she was visitng us..  We had to eat everyday, so she didn't eschew this particular task. She would set us to sorting through lentils or snapping the ends off of green beans.

One of the worst tasks that she had for us was helping with gnocchi.  First of all, I'm not terribly partial to gnochhi.  Secondly, we had to help peel the potatoes.  Which doesn't sound too awful.  Except that first she would bake the potatoes and we'd have to peel them hot.  By the time we were finished, our hands would be bright red and burning.  Grandmom would take the potatoes and put them through a ricer, while the rest of us went of to stick our hands in ice.

As I was describing the process to my husband one day, he asked why the potatoes had to be peeled hot.  He's an engineer, and "Because my grandmother said so" wasn't really a good enough answer for him.  It was all I had.  In flipping through the food network one day, someone was making gnocchi.  The chef also said the potatoes had to be peeled hot, and had an actual reason why.  I don't remember what it was, but Grandmom was vindicated.

The biggest problem with gnocchi is that even after enduring first degree burns, ricing the potatoes, making the dough, cutting the gnocchi, and rolling it down the back of a fork to give it ridges, it might not work.  Too much flour, and the gnocchi will be too heavy and dense.  Too little flour, and the gnocchi won't hold together in boiling water.

Of course, my grandmother doesn't have a recipe.  She can't tell us how many potatoes she uses, or how much flour or anything like that.  In truth, she adjusts these things based on the number of people she's cooking for and the humidity.  She does it all by the feel of the dough.  And, even after decades of cooking, she still gets nervous making them that they won't "come good."  She always has pasta waiting as back-up.  And you know, I never remember her using that pasta.  She always had it, and always there was that moment of trepidation as she dropped the gnocchi into the boiling water.  But we always went back to playing cards with bellies full of gnocchi.