ZingW

If you’ve ever made gnocchi, you know how difficult it can be to get right. “We’ve all made the gluey, leaden sinkers,” New York chef Jonathan Benno told The Washington Post more than a decade ago.

If you haven’t made them, you’ve certainly tasted them. “They’re dense, chewy and bland, little gummy potato pellets that taste of raw flour and, frankly, aren’t worth eating,” chef Tom Colicchio told the Los Angeles Times. “Done right, though, gnocchi are pillowy and tender, and they practically melt in your mouth.”

Get the recipe: Roman-Style Gnocchi

But let’s be clear about something: They were talking about potato gnocchi, which have become the most popular iteration of a dish with ancient roots that has been made from such other ingredients as flour, semolina, ricotta and more.

As much as I adore perfectly made potato gnocchi, I rarely make it at home. What I do make is the semolina version: gnocchi alla Romana, named for its origins in Rome. (Or maybe Romania, or maybe northern Italy? Food history is a tricky beast.)

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This is a very different dish than potato gnocchi. Rather than roasting potatoes, combining the starchy flesh with flour and egg yolk and forming them — lightly, so lightly, please! — into dumplings before boiling them, this style comes together more like polenta. You make a porridge with the semolina flour, cooking it on the stovetop with milk, until it gets nice and thick; stir in egg, butter and cheese; then spread it out on a sheet pan to let it solidify. You then cut it into circles or squares, shingle them in a casserole dish, add more butter and cheese — make it rain! — and bake until the top is golden brown and a little crunchy, and the inside is creamy and soft.

You can see the appeal: No roasting, no boiling, no need to have a light touch to prevent the gluten development that leads to tough dumplings.

Another way it’s different is in the serving: Traditionally, gnocchi alla Romana is eaten plain, as a side dish or perhaps with a salad, with no sauce or other accoutrements needed to distract you from the elemental satisfaction of a dish so hearty and warming. After I started getting into making it, though, I couldn’t resist playing around a little, and I have nestled sauteed mushrooms, roasted red peppers, even asparagus and peas in between those shingles before baking.

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Heresy? Maybe not. The guru of classic Italian cooking, the late Marcella Hazan, called for prosciutto, bacon or ham strips to top her gnocchi alla Romana before baking, so I don’t feel so bad about my wanderings. Nonetheless, the recipe I present here is stripped down, so you can experience it as I think it was originally intended — and then start playing around with any additions you want.

In that L.A. Times piece, Colicchio also said, “My general rule of thumb when it comes to cooking is that the fewer ingredients a dish contains, the harder it is to do right.”

That is certainly true of potato gnocchi, but guess what? Gnocchi alla Romana, with just six ingredients (including salt), is almost impossible to mess up.

Get the recipe: Roman-Style Gnocchi

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