Today the writers and cooks at MLK are delighted to welcome guest Leslie Karst! We love her books and can't wait for the new one. Meanwhile, enjoy her gnocchi recipe and add a comment to be entered in the giveaway for DEATH AL FRESCO!
Leslie Karst: The protagonist of my Sally Solari culinary mysteries comes
from an Italian-American family who runs an Italian seafood restaurant out on
the historic fisherman’s wharf in Santa Cruz, California. I’m not Italian,
however, and my cooking expertise leans more to the French end of the spectrum.
As a result, I’ve deemed it prudent to conduct research prior to writing many
of the food scenes in the books (e.g., when Nonna prepares her Sunday gravy,
in Dying for a Taste).
Happily for me, this research is ongoing. So when I was asked
by a friend if I wanted to come to his house for a gnocchi-making demo by
90-year old Aurora Leveroni, I readily responded “Si, certo!” (This recipe has yet to appear in any of my books, but
is sure to turn up soon.)
yours truly with Aurora
and the finished product
The word “gnoccho”
(the singular form) most likely derives from either “nocchio” (a knot of wood) or “nocca” (knuckle). These small
dumplings have been eaten on the Italian peninsula since at least the days of
the Roman Empire, when they were made of semolina and eggs. [See here.] After the potato was brought to Europe from the New World, the Italians
incorporated it into their dumplings, creating what we now think of as the
traditional potato gnocchi.
Aurora, who grew up in San Francisco, learned this technique
from her mother—née Marie Dell-Era—who was born in the Lake Como region of
Northern Italy.
We made a recipe for 30 servings, using five pounds of
potatoes, but my directions here cut that amount in half. These are the
ingredients:
2 ½ lbs. Idaho or Russet potatoes
1 whole egg, lightly beaten
½ tsp. salt
½ tsp. baking powder
½ tbsp. olive oil
2-3 cups unbleached flour
Boil the potatoes with the skins on, until well done. (Waxy
varieties such as Yukon Gold should not be used, as they have too much water
content.) Do not pierce them or cut them in half, because you want as
little water as possible to be absorbed (you could roast the potatoes at 400
degrees till tender instead—in which case you should pierce them first with a
fork—but Aurora uses the boiling method and hers came out great).
As soon as the potatoes are done, peel them and put them
through a ricer while still hot (or you can grate them over the large holes of
a box grater):
Add the egg, salt, baking powder, and olive oil to the riced
potatoes, and mix well. Using your hands is best. Then slowly mix in unbleached
flour. The amount of flour will vary, depending on the weather, moisture
content of the potatoes, type of flour, and other unknowable variables, but you
want to keep adding it until the dough stops being sticky and is easy to work.
Transfer the dough to the counter to knead as you would for
bread, three to four minutes.
The next step is to cut off pieces of the dough and roll
them into long “snakes,” about ½ inch thick. Work from the center out, as you
would if rolling out a baguette:
Next, cut the snakes into ½ inch pieces:
You can use the gnocchi as they are now if you like, but
Italian gnocchi are typically made with ridges. To shape her gnocchi, Aurora
uses the fork method, rolling the uncut, rounded sides of the pieces lightly on
the back of a fork to make indentations:
Here’s a close-up of what the gnocchi look like after being
shaped:
At this point you can either cook the gnocchi or freeze them
for later use. If you’re not going to eat them right away, spread them (not
touching) on a lightly-floured cookie sheet, sprinkle a little more flour on
top, and put the sheet in the freezer. (See photo at top of this post.) After
they are frozen, they can be transferred to zip-lock baggies and kept in the
freezer until use.
Cooking the gnocchi is easy. Simply drop the frozen morsels
into boiling, heavily salted water. Stir them once so they don’t stick to the
bottom, and then wait until they rise to the top, which means they’re done.
Drain them, and they’re ready to eat.
Gnocchi are best served with a simple sauce, so as not to
overwhelm their delicate flavor. I served the bag that Aurora gave me drizzled
with brown butter and topped with crispy sage (fried in the butter) and grated
Romano cheese:
Buon appetito!
Leave a comment for a chance to win a hard cover copy of Leslie’s
newest Sally Solari mystery, Death al Fresco!
About Death al Fresco
It’s early autumn
in Santa Cruz and restaurateur Sally Solari, inspired by the eye-popping
canvases of Paul Gauguin, the artist for whom her restaurant is named, enrolls
in a plein air painting class. But the beauty of the Monterey Bay coastline is
shattered during one of their outings when Sally’s dog sniffs out a corpse
entangled in a pile of kelp.
The body is
identified as Gino, a local fisherman and a regular at Sally’s father’s
restaurant, Solari's, until he disappeared after dining there a few nights
before. But after witnesses claim he left reeling drunk, fingers begin to point
at Sally’s dad for negligently allowing the old man to walk home alone at
night. From a long menu of suspects, including a cast of colorful characters
who frequent the historic Santa Cruz fisherman’s wharf, Sally must serve up a
tall order in order to clear her father’s name.
The daughter of a law professor and a potter, Leslie
Karst learned early, during family dinner conversations, the value of both
careful analysis and the arts—ideal ingredients for a mystery story. She now
writes the Sally Solari Mysteries (Dying for a Taste, A Measure of
Murder), a culinary series set in Santa Cruz, California. An ex-lawyer like
her sleuth, Leslie also has degrees in English literature and the culinary
arts. The next in the series, Death al Fresco, releases March 13th.
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You can visit Leslie on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/lesliekarstauthor/
, and you can go to her author website to sign for her newsletter—full of recipes and fun Italian facts!—and to purchase
all her books.
