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While making gnocchi with chef Lynn Rinaldi, it occurred to me that these light little pillows of riced potatoes have something in common with matzo balls. Both foods are made by feel and you can end up with either floaters or sinkers. I’ve been served some nasty leaden gnocchi and heavy matzo balls in restaurants. Rinaldi’s melt in your mouth.
Rinaldi opened Paradiso, 1627 E. Passyunk Ave., in autumn 2004. She has received rave reviews from critics, including me, and has not roamed far from her roots.
“I grew up on 12th Street between Tasker and Dickinson,” Rinaldi said as she set pots to boil on my stove top. “I moved to 17th and Porter about 15 years ago.”
Her mother’s family is from Abruzzi and her father’s family hails from Calabria.
“I had the best of both worlds. I have four brothers and my mother was always cooking,” she said.
Rinaldi told and showed me the secret to making light-as-a-feather potato gnocchi.
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“Use either russet potatoes or Idaho potatoes,” she said. “You want a potato with a high starch content. Boil the potatoes with the skin on. Peel the skin off with your fingers and put them through a ricer. You will have no lumps.”
I watched as she floured my granite countertop and added eggs, kosher salt, white pepper and flour to the riced potatoes to form a ball of dough.
“You really do make gnocchi by feel,” she said. “The dough must be moist.”
I felt the dough and it was moist. It was my turn to gently knead the dough. Rinaldi used a pastry cutter and sliced off a piece. She then rolled the dough into a long rope, cut off a piece for me and I then rolled it.
“This has a calming effect on me,” I said. “The dough feels like velvet.”
Once the large pot of salted water came to the boil, we cut off pieces of dough about one-half inch thick and gently placed them in the pot.
“They’re done as soon as they float to the top. It only takes about a minute,” she said.
She placed a large pool of homemade marinara sauce in a skillet. She gently heated it and placed the finished gnocchi in the sauce. She shook the pan and the gnocchi leapt about.
“Why do you do that?,” I asked. “I tried to flip food in a pan and ended up with a nasty burn. I swore I would never do that again.”
“Oh, I have war wounds. “I have burn marks up and down my arm,” she said with a chuckle.
She and Corey Baver, her husband of nearly one year, were wed at the B.R. Cohn Vineyard and Olive Oil Company in California.
“It was just us and a female minister,” she recalled. “A woman who works at B.R. Cohn was our witness. She cried when the ceremony was over.”
Rinaldi enjoys speaking of her life in the restaurant business. Her parents owned a summer home in Ventnor, N.J., and by age 16 she was working as a busgirl.
“I did not start cooking until I was in my 30s,” she said. “I enrolled in the two-year program at The Restaurant School. The tuition was about $22,000. Today, it is about $42,000. I think it is hard for parents to comprehend that.”
June 30 will be her one-year anniversary. She and Baver wanted to dine at The French Laundry, Thomas Keller’s highly-acclaimed restaurant in Yountville, Calif., after their wedding.
“You need reservations weeks in advance. Corey kept calling and we could not book a table,” Rinaldi said. A friend who works at Le Bec-Fin promised Georges would get us in.”
Perrier called and the newlyweds dined at 8:45 p.m.
Potato Gnocchi
Ingredients:
4 large Idaho or russet potatoes
Kosher salt and white pepper, to taste
3 large eggs
3 cups of flour
Directions:
Place the potatoes in a large pot. Bring to a boil, lower to a simmer and cook for about 40 minutes. Drain and peel them with your fingers once they are cool enough to handle.
Put the potatoes through a potato ricer. Place them on a cookie sheet and spread them out.
Flour your work surface. Place the potatoes on the work surface and gradually add the salt, white pepper, eggs and flour. Knead the dough but do not overwork it.
Form the dough into a ball. Cut it into six equal pieces. Roll each piece into a long rope. Using a pastry cutter or knife, cut the dough into one-half-inch pieces. Place them in boiling water and cook until they float to the top, about one minute.
The sauce is up to you. Marinara, brown butter and sage or rich Gorgonzola are excellent choices.
Serves eight as an appetizer portion or four as a main course.
To see a video of chef Lynn Rinaldi making gnocchi, visit www.southphillyreview.com/multimedia
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