Sweet Potato Gnocchi - A Vegan Recipe

Things tend to get complicated in the pasta world, but as you may have read in my last blog post, things are about to get super simple. No machine required and no fancy ingredients here folks. This is an easy-peasy sweet potato gnocchi that will take little money, little imagination, but admittedly a wee bit of time. So save this one for a night with the wine, a weekend perhaps, maybe a lazy Sunday like the one I'm having. 

What you'll need:

• One sweet potato
• Salt
• Pepper
• Flour
• Oven and stovetop
• A medium pot
• Fork
• A bowl

*You'll see that I'm using an oven with a stovetop, and you may be thinking, "Wait a minute, when did she get an actual kitchen?" And the answer is, "Recently." I still can't escape the littleness of it all: 

But, if all you have is a microwave and an electric burner, we can still make dreams come true. Just use the microwave to bake the sweet potato and use the electric burner to boil the pasta. 

First thing's first: Set the oven to 400℉. While that heats, take the sweet potato and pierce it all around with a fork. Set the sweet potato on a baking pan, and pop it in the pre-heated oven to bake for 40 minutes, or until it starts to ooze through the fork holes. When the sweet potato is done, take it out of the oven to cool. I should say that I tend to make this recipe with leftover sweet potatoes that I've already baked previously for another dinner, just to save time since this recipe is a bit of time. 

Begin boiling a medium pot halfway filled with water. Add a sprinkle of salt. I still don't know what the outcome is whether you add salt or not, but I heard it's barbaric to not season the pasta water, so I submit for shoots and giggles. 

Take the cooked sweet potato and peel off the skin. Mush the naked sweet potato in a bowl. Season with salt and pepper. Begin by adding 1 Cup of Flour to the sweet potato mush to create a dough. Try to get the dough to a consistency that isn't so sticky. Don't be afraid to keep adding flour - the potato seems to soak it up well. Break the dough up into quarters and roll each into a ball. Take one quarter ball of dough and roll it into a snake shape. Once the dough is about half an inch thick, cut the snake into little pieces of rectangular dough, kinda like this lame table I made: 

I don't know, I'm a visual person. 

Repeat this with the other three quarters of dough until you have a bunch of bite-sized dough pieces. Spread some flour over the pieces. Now, get out the fork and place it upside down on the counter with the tines pointing away from you. Now, take a piece of dough, start at the top of the tines, and roll the dough down the tines toward you, which should create ridges in the dough while rolling it. If you are having trouble because it is sticky, just put more flour on the dough piece and start over. Just start from the top of the tines, and roll down to the bottom of the tines. Do this to all of the dough pieces. The method I've taught my mother to get the perfect roll off the tines is to use two fingers: pointer and middle, smush the dough at the very top and then release pressure as you roll it down so it curls gently. 

 

Once the dough is shaped and the water is boiling, add all of the pasta pieces to the water. Boil the pasta for about 5 minutes or until tender. Give one a taste test and make sure it no longer tastes like flour. Strain the pasta and run under some cold water to stop the cooking process. 

I mean, you feelin' fancy? I told you it'd get gourmet up in here! 

Sauce options: I enjoy alfredo sauce or any kind of white sauce with these gnocchi. I don't particularly like red sauce with this dish unless it's my lemony, cheesy, tomato sauce I made for the Spaetzle. For extra color, add some wilted fresh spinach.