In my experience, gnocchi cravings and pasta cravings are very different things. When I’ve got pasta on the brain, I’m usually looking for a vehicle for sauce, a carby and delightfully shaped tool to transport carbonara into my mouth. When my body wants gnocchi, something’s usually wrong.
Not that gnocchi is a bad thing—quite the opposite. Soft, doughy dumplings that comfort like little else, they’re perfect for when I need a distinctly pleasurable dinner experience, often to counteract a non-pleasant day. A few bites are enough to right the ship: chewy, tender, filling, and bad vibe erasing. (Gnocchi is also the name of my parents' dog, so the word on a menu alone fills me with love for a dumb, fluffy creature.)
Though many recipes for gnocchi use potato as the base, a number of vegetables can be used to create the same enjoyable texture. In fact, when making gnocchi at home, turning to whatever sturdy produce is languishing in your fridge is a great place to start.
Stuart Brioza, chef and owner of State Bird Provisions in San Francisco, was the first to tip me off to this, thanks to a recipe in the restaurant's cookbook. The brainchild of chef de cuisine Gaby Maeda, State Bird’s carrot mochi is a bright orange, pillowy dumpling that, the first time I ate it, rang all the same bells as my favorite potato gnocchi. “Gaby was experimenting with different vegetables and really brought this dish to the plate,” Brioza told me. “The carrot is a favorite, but we’ve also done a few different varieties over the years, like beet and pumpkin. Whatever you like, as long as it’s got real heft, can do it.”
According to Kevin Adey, chef and owner of Faro in Brooklyn, swapping out potato for other vegetables works in a number of different gnocchi preparations. “Almost anything could be made to work with gnocchi à la Parisienne (created like choux pastry, with hot water) or gnocchi alla romana (which are semolina-based),” he says. The simplest and most foolproof method, however, which I’ve turned to again and again, is a hybrid between classic potato gnocchi and ricotta gnocchi, made of just vegetables, ricotta cheese, and all-purpose flour. Read on for a homemade gnocchi-how to using this technique—and any sturdy, starchy vegetable you like.
Pick your vegetable
Not all vegetables are created equal when it comes to making gnocchi. Selecting the right one for the base of your dumplings means finding the perfect combination of texture and flavor. “The starchier the vegetable, the more potato gnocchi-like the final texture will be,” says Emily Fedner, cofounder of Petite Pasta Joint, a pop-up that operates out of the century-old NYC pasta shop Rafetto’s. “Go for root vegetables like sweet potato, carrot, beet, and thicker, denser squashes.” Brioza agrees: “Stronger flavored root vegetables really lend themselves to this kind of process—as well as things with significant color, like pumpkin or butternut squash. In our experience, the sweeter the vegetable the better.”
