Gnocchi
Encyclopedia
- For the Italian Baroque composer, please see Pietro GnocchiPietro GnocchiPietro Gnocchi was an Italian composer, choir director, historian, and geographer of the late Baroque era, active mainly in Brescia, where he was choir director of Brescia Cathedral...
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Gnocchi (ˈnɒki, ˈnjɒki; ˈɲɔkki, singular gnocco) are various thick, soft dumplings. They may be made from semolina
Semolina
Semolina is the coarse, purified wheat middlings of durum wheat used in making pasta, and also used for breakfast cereals and puddings. Semolina is also used to designate coarse middlings from other varieties of wheat, and from other grains such as rice and corn.-Name:The term semolina derives from...
, ordinary wheat
Wheat
Wheat is a cereal grain, originally from the Levant region of the Near East, but now cultivated worldwide. In 2007 world production of wheat was 607 million tons, making it the third most-produced cereal after maize and rice...
flour, flour and egg
Egg (food)
Eggs are laid by females of many different species, including birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish, and have probably been eaten by mankind for millennia. Bird and reptile eggs consist of a protective eggshell, albumen , and vitellus , contained within various thin membranes...
, flour, egg, and cheese
Cheese
Cheese is a generic term for a diverse group of milk-based food products. Cheese is produced throughout the world in wide-ranging flavors, textures, and forms....
, potato
Potato
The potato is a starchy, tuberous crop from the perennial Solanum tuberosum of the Solanaceae family . The word potato may refer to the plant itself as well as the edible tuber. In the region of the Andes, there are some other closely related cultivated potato species...
, bread crumbs, or similar ingredients. The smaller forms are called gnocchetti.
Like many Italian dishes
Italian cuisine
Italian cuisine has developed through centuries of social and political changes, with roots as far back as the 4th century BCE. Italian cuisine in itself takes heavy influences, including Etruscan, ancient Greek, ancient Roman, Byzantine, Jewish and Arab cuisines...
, there is considerable variation in recipes and names across different regions. For example, the Tuscan malfatti
Malfatti
Malfatti is Italian surname of;- People :* Anita Malfatti , Brazilian artist...
are a sort of flour, ricotta, and spinach gnocchi; the Pugliese cavatielli are flour-based, and so on.
Gnocchi are eaten as a first course
Entrée
An entrée is a dish served before the main course, or between two principal courses of a meal.The disappearance in the early 20th century of a large communal main course such as a roast as a standard part of the meal in the English-speaking world has led to the term being used to describe the main...
(primi piatti), alternatives to soups (minestre), or pasta
Pasta
Pasta is a staple food of traditional Italian cuisine, now of worldwide renown. It takes the form of unleavened dough, made in Italy, mostly of durum wheat , water and sometimes eggs. Pasta comes in a variety of different shapes that serve for both decoration and to act as a carrier for the...
. They are widely available dried, frozen, or fresh in vacuum sealed packages in supermarkets and specialty stores. Classic accompaniments of gnocchi include tomato sauce
Tomato sauce
A tomato sauce is any of a very large number of sauces made primarily from tomatoes, usually to be served as part of a dish...
s, pesto
Pesto
Pesto is a sauce originating in Genoa in the Liguria region of northern Italy , and traditionally consists of crushed garlic, basil and pine nuts blended with olive oil and Parmigiano Reggiano and Fiore Sardo...
, and melted butter (sometimes fried butter) with cheese.
While they are often available frozen in specialty grocers, they are typically homemade in Italian and Italian-American households.
Origin
The word gnocchi may derive from the Italian word nocchio, meaning a knot in wood, or from nocca (meaning knuckle). It has been a traditional Italian pastaPasta
Pasta is a staple food of traditional Italian cuisine, now of worldwide renown. It takes the form of unleavened dough, made in Italy, mostly of durum wheat , water and sometimes eggs. Pasta comes in a variety of different shapes that serve for both decoration and to act as a carrier for the...
type of probably Middle Eastern origin since Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
times. It was introduced by the Roman Legions during the enormous expansion of the empire into the countries of the European continent. In the past 2,000 years, each country developed its own specific type of small dumplings, with the ancient gnocchi as their common ancestor. In Roman times, gnocchi were made from a semolina porridge-like dough mixed with eggs, and are still found in similar forms today, particularly Sardinia
Sardinia
Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea . It is an autonomous region of Italy, and the nearest land masses are the French island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Tunisia and the Spanish Balearic Islands.The name Sardinia is from the pre-Roman noun *sard[],...
's malloreddus (although they do not contain eggs).
The use of potato is a relatively recent innovation, occurring after the introduction of the potato to Europe in the 16th century. Potato gnocchi are particularly popular in Abruzzo
Abruzzo
Abruzzo is a region in Italy, its western border lying less than due east of Rome. Abruzzo borders the region of Marche to the north, Lazio to the west and south-west, Molise to the south-east, and the Adriatic Sea to the east...
, Ciociaria
Ciociaria
Ciociaria is the name of a traditional region of Central Italy without a defined border nor historical identity. The name was adopted by a fascist movement of Frosinone as an ethnical denomination for the province of Frosinone, when it was created in 1927....
and other provinces of Latium
Latium
Lazio is one of the 20 administrative regions of Italy, situated in the central peninsular section of the country. With about 5.7 million residents and a GDP of more than 170 billion euros, Lazio is the third most populated and the second richest region of Italy...
; they are better prepared with red potatoes.
Regional varieties
One variety, gnocchi di pane (literally "bread lumps"), derived from the SemmelknödelKnödel
Knödel or Klöße are large round poached or boiled potato or bread dumplings, made without yeast. They are typical components of Austrian, German, Hungarian and Czech cuisine, and come in many different forms. They can be made from flour, potatoes, old bread, semolina and many more...
, is made from bread crumbs and is popular in Friuli
Friuli
Friuli is an area of northeastern Italy with its own particular cultural and historical identity. It comprises the major part of the autonomous region Friuli-Venezia Giulia, i.e. the province of Udine, Pordenone, Gorizia, excluding Trieste...
and Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol. Another variety from the latter region is spinach gnocchi.
In Croatia
Gnocchi are very popular and often served dish in coastal CroatiaCroatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
, typically being served as a first course or a side dish with Dalmatinska pašticada
Pašticada
Pašticada is a stewed beef dish cooked in special sauce, popular in Croatia. It is often called Dalmatinska pašticada because it originates in Dalmatia. It requires long and meticulous preparation, which includes marinating the beef in vinegar, lemon and rosemary for at least 24 hours...
.
In France
The name is also used in France in the dish known as "gnocchis à la parisienne", a hot dish comprising gnocchi formed of choux pastryChoux pastry
Choux pastry, or pâte à choux , is a light pastry dough used to make profiteroles, croquembouches, éclairs, French crullers, beignets, St. Honoré cake, Indonesian kue sus, and gougères. It contains only butter, water, flour, and eggs...
, and served with Béchamel sauce
Béchamel sauce
Béchamel sauce , also known as white sauce, is one of the mother sauces of French cuisine and is used in many recipes of Italian cuisine, for example lasagne. It is used as the base for other sauces . It is traditionally made by whisking scalded milk gradually into a white roux...
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In Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay
Because of the significant number of Italian immigrants that arrived in these countries gnocchi, ñoqui as it is called in SpanishSpanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
or nhoque in Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, is a very popular plate. The popularity of this Italian plate reflects on the tradition of eating them on the 29th of each month and some people put money under their plate as the tradition says it will give prosperity to the commensal.