Gnocchi and Alfredo

I love gnocchi! And it's all Giada de Laurentiis' fault! :)

Last night I made a big match of mashed potatoes and pulled about 3 cups of potatoes to the side before adding butter, milk and salt and pepper to make traditional mashed potatoes. To make gnocchi, which is basically a pasta-like dish made out of potatoes, you add eggs and flour and roll it out.

The recipe I use is from Giada's book "Everyday Pasta."

For lunch today, I warmed up some alfredo sauce I had leftover from a fettuccine dish I made with kale, mushrooms and tomatoes several days ago. Oh, so wonderful! The alfredo recipe is from Easy Everyday Cooking, a recipe subscription service I used several years ago. I still use the recipe cards to this day.

If you tend to make a lot of mashed potatoes, how about giving this recipe a try. Below is the recipe from the book, but here's a similar Giada gnocchi recipe here. I've also included the alfredo sauce below, which is good but doesn't have garlic, which I thought every alfredo sauce had.

Gnocchi

3 cups of mashed potatoes (24 oz.) (maybe 2 medium or large potatoes)

1 egg

1 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. pepper

3/4 cup flour

1/4 cup parmesan cheese (optional)

After the potatoes are boiled and mashed, mix in the egg, salt and pepper. Then add in the flour and mix well.

Roll a palmful of potato out at a time into a snake-like log. Cut into bite-sized pieces. (Giada recommends running the cut pieces along the tines of a fork. I sometimes do this, but not always. This may help the gnocchi hold sauces after it's cooked.)

Next, plop the potato gnocchi by batches into boiling water. When they float to the top, they're done.

Top the gnocchi with parmesan cheese, if you'd like. Since I ate this with alfredo, extra cheese was not needed.

Other ideas: eat the gnocchi with tomato-based sauces or a browned butter sauce. I also wonder if this would be good as a pasta salad-type dish. Mmmmmm ...

Alfredo

1 cup butter, softened

2 cups whipping cream

2 cups grated parmesan cheese

Combine the butter, whipping cream and cheese in a bowl. And that's it! Throw it on some pasta, chicken, gnocchi or other dish.