Sweet Potato Gnocchi

Sweet Potato Gnocchi

Ingredients:

2 lbs. sweet potatoes

1 Tbsp. salt (for cooking water)

2 - 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling and shaping

1 egg

Peel sweet potatoes and cut into large, similarly sized chunks. Put sweet potatoes pieces in a large pot and cover with water. Add salt and bring to a boil. Cook until tender. Drain thoroughly and return sweet potato chunks to the empty, hot pot. Shake them a bit to help further evaporate excess water in them.

Mash potatoes thoroughly. (I actually used my submersion blender to make sure there were no lumps.) But a large fork or potato masher work, too.

Stir in flour 1/2 cup at a time, until a dough forms. You may or may not need the final 1/2 cup. The dough will be very soft.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Drop a spoonful of the dough into the boiling water, stir, and let cook until it floats to the surface and then let it cook another 30 seconds. Use a slotted spoon to remove dumpling sample. If it held together, proceed with the recipe without adding the egg. If it fell apart, stir in the egg - at first the dough will pull apart and all may seem lost. Keep stirring: The dough will come back together. If the addition of the egg made the dough terribly wet, stir in up to another 1/2 cup flour.

Divide dough into four even sections. Working with one at a time, dump dough onto a well floured surface and roll into a 1-inch-thick snake. Cut into 1/2-inch pieces and place on a floured baking sheet. Repeat with remaining dough.

Cook dumplings, as described for the sample above, in salted water, being careful not to crowd the pot. Work in batches and keep cooked gnocchi tossed in a bit of butter in a warm oven while you cook the remaining gnocchi. Serve with butter and Parmesan, browned butter and sage, or your favorite pasta sauce.