potato gnocchi and butternut squash sauce!

we made potato gnocchi and butternut squash sauce the other night for dinner.

for the pasta, we took a recipe from mario batali, because we figured he knows what he's doing when it comes to pasta.

(if you want his recipe, click here).

now, first up is making the dough. i must first say that our dough was quite sticky, and required much more than 2 cups of flour. like, 3. but, to be fair, we think we had more than 3 pounds of potatoes. so, who the heck knows what was going on in the kitchen. absolute mayhem! or not - just a lot of potatoes and a devil-may-care attitude to measurements on this particular night.

anyway. after you make the dough you first roll in into balls and and then into little dough worms, like so:

then, you cut everything up into little, gnocchi-like pieces, and you boil the water. the following is a pretty picture of the pieces. but do not do what we did, and pile up all the pieces and wait for the boiling water, because then they all stick together. the good news is that, if this happens to you, then you get to roll out the worms and begin anew.

look! gnocchi as it is coming out of boiling water! pay no attention to the severely blurry and mechanically doctored aspects of this photo!

look! gnocchi as it is briefly plunged into an ice water bath!

and again as it is lightly pan-fried in the skillet. its true that this one may also be slightly blurry, but you try cooking and taking pics at the same time, and then we'll talk:

ok - we maybe invented the sauce recipe. here is how it went. first, you roast your squash, like so:

then, you puree said squash with some olive oil in the food processor. pretty!

after that, into a saucepan with some vegetable broth, some salt and pepper, a little organic butter, and some fresh, chopped sage. do not ask me how much of each, because i made it up.

then, you put the two together, sprinkle some chopped walnuts on top and eat. quite nice, if i do say so myself. go team!

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