When I was a little girl I used to help my grandmother Vittoria with my mother and my aunts. We staied all together around the kitchen’s table to prepare every kind of delicacy for the family sunday lunch. It was a very special moment.

I have all these wonderful memories in my mind and I think that exactly in those moments my passion for cooking was born.

I was very attached to my grandmother. And I’m very happy to do today what she did her many years ago.

She was a cook: she warked in my grandfather’s restaurant. He inherited it from my great grandfather….it was Arturo’s restaurant. My great grandfather started with street food and then he bought this place to set up a really restaurant and bar.

The recipe that remind me more my grandmother is the “potato gnocchi”.

She used to prepare the flour on the table and add in the centre the smashed potatoes. Then she started to mix by hand until she had nice pliable ball of dough; after that she took the dough, a piece at time, and roll it out gently with her hands until create rolls of about 3 inches. Then she cut the tubes of dough into pieces and me and my aunt used to press each pieces against tines of a floured fork, with our thumbs to roll them end of tines and give the particular form.

I don’t remember how many times I’ve eaten them raw….

When my grandmother made gnocchi, it was always a happy day for me, because the love that put her into cooking was unique, and all the recipes she desiced to do where full of that love….a very expecially ingredients!

I’ve decided to prepare this vegan version, served with a delicious carrot and saffron cream…

Ingredients:

(4 people)

  • 3 medium-large potatoes
  • 8 tablespoon whole flour
  • 4 carrots
  • 1 coffeespoon saffron
  • soia cream
  • extra virgin olive oil
  • salt

Steps:

  1. Put potatoes in a pot and cover them completely with cold water; bring to a boil and simmer until tender (or when you can enter with a knife…about 30 minutes)
  2. Let cool them until they can be handled; then peel and squash them with a ricer
  3. Add potatoes to the flour with a half coffeespoon of salt
  4. Knead on a floured board and cut into 4 portions
  5. Roll gently each portion into a long log of about 3 inches thick; cut in smaller pieces and then press every pieces of dough against tines of a floured fork; then push with your thumb and roll them toward end of tines
  6. Leave gnocchi on a floured kitchen towel
  7. Cook gnocchi in boiling and salted water until they float
  8. Drip and put them in a pan with the carrot’s cream
  9. Serve them with some extra virgin olive oil and a leaf of sage