Grandma DiLaura's Italian Ricotta Gnocchi

Author Notes

I grew up going to my Italian grandmother's every Sunday for dinner. I have fond memories of handmade pasta drying on a rack, big pots of sauce simmering away on the stove and stinky hard Italian cheeses that I loved to snack on, even as a child. But my most favorite Sundays at Grandma's were the Sundays when she made her gnocchi.

For many years she used potato, but then wised up to the ease and lightness of using ricotta instead. It took about 20 years before I finally pinned her down and made her write the recipe that had always been made by memory and feel. Isn't that how all Italian grandmother's cook?

It’s a fairly easy process. First, mix egg, ricotta cheese, and oil together, then add the grated parmesan cheese and sprinkle with nutmeg to taste. Once you sift and mix the flour in, form a ball and cut off slices of dough like cutting a loaf of bread. Roll into thumb-sized-thick ropes by spreading out your hands and fingers and rolling from center out to each edge of the rope.

To cut the gnocchi, line your ropes parallel to one another and cut two at a time into 1-inch pieces. Roll each piece off the back of a fork to make imprints that will help hold the sauce.

Freezing is not necessary if you are cooking right away, but it does help prevent them from sticking together when you add to the water. All you really need is about 10-15 minutes to give them a chance to firm up on the outside before dropping in the pot. If you aren't going to make them right away, it's important to let them freeze on the tray first so that they don't stick together when you store in a bag or container for future use, since they are so soft and delicate.

As soon as you're ready to cook, they should go straight from the freezer to the boiling pot (no defrosting) and will cook in essentially the same amount of time. Nice thing to have on hand for a midweek meal!

Since the best meals are the ones that are shared, I want to take it out of the old family box and contribute it to the Food52 community. Buon Appetito! —cdilaura

Test Kitchen Notes

We're newly convinced, thanks to this recipe, that homemade gnocchi can be a weeknight dinner. And ricotta gnocchi like cdilaura's (a.k.a. our friend Christina) are especially easy to pull together, and won't weigh you down like their potato-based counterparts. We loved these nearly bare–just sauteed in some brown butter–so we could really taste the ricotta and speckles of nutmeg, but Christina's Grandma DiLaura's Tomato and Meat Sauce recipe (also on the site) is delicious too. –A&M

—The Editors