First post of 2021! I hope everyone has had a good start to the year; ours kicked off with valiant efforts to calm a hysterical spaniel-and-who-knows-what-else mix during Rome’s impressive (or so I hear) NY midnight fireworks display. Apart from that, things have been rather uneventful under the city’s various holiday lockdowns, available in vibrant shades of yellow (nope), orange (definitely not), and red (don’t even think about it). In any case, cheers to a new year, or more realistically— fingers crossed that this one is a little easier on us than its predecessor.

After a short (but still too long!) hiatus I’m picking up the blog’s Pasta Series again, i.e my monthly post detailing the latest homemade pasta I’ve attempted and (hopefully) conquered. Enter these extra cozy gnocchi alla romana, or rather: gnocchi, done the Roman way.

Confused?! Thought so! After all, these aren’t gnocchi as you might normally know them — potatoes are noticeably absent from the ingredient list, as is flour; there’s no use for a board to form those telltale gnocchi ridges; there is no boiling required, meaning the gnocchi do not float magically to the top of the pot once cooked. Nope: gnocchi alla romana are rebel gnocchi, rule-breaking gnocchi, gnocchi that have set out to challenge all your previously held notions and beliefs about gnocchi. In other words: they ditch the potatoes and flour in favor of pleasantly grainy semolina, which is cooked in milk until thick (polenta-ish), mixed with butter and cheese, and then spread out to cool before being cut out in to circles, cookie-like. The resulting semolina coins are then tucked snugly into a dish, drizzled with butter, sprinkled with more cheese, and baked, gratin-style. If you’re following the below recipe, said gnocchi are mixed with lots of sharp Parmesan and garnished with Pecorino for punch; if you’re me, you’ll also add lots of (not so traditional but oh-so-delicious) freshly ground black pepper to give this dish a cacio e pepe edge. The hardest part: waiting the 20 minute bake-time, after which your gnocchi alla romana masterpiece will emerge from the oven in all its luxurious, bubbling, golden brown splendor. Winter will be no match for it; 2021 will start off a little better because of it.

Potato gnocchi who?!

A couple of notes: Listen up! Semolina is different from the semola rimacinata you may remember from my previous posts on trofie, orecchiette, and cavatelli. While semola and semolina are similar, they are not interchangeable; semolina is much coarser than fine ground semola (you can learn more about that here if you’d like). Make sure therefore that you use semolina for this recipe (much easier to find in the U.S than semola, by the way). I found that after I cut the semolina discs out, I had some scraps leftover (kind of like when you make cookies). So as not to waste them, you can gather them together, flatten them out again, and cut more circles out. Finally, you can skip the cheese and butter to garnish and also bake these with tomato sauce, mozzarella, and even some pancetta, if you’d like, as I once did with Carla Tomasi.

Want to know what the other recipes are in the blog’s Pasta Series/want more gnocchi recipes? Click here.

GNOCCHI ALLA ROMANA

Recipe adapted and translated from Giallo Zafferano. Serves 4.

Ingredients for the gnocchi:
1 liter (4 cups) whole milk
1 1/2 cups (250 grams) semolina
1 tablespoon (30 grams) butter
1 cup (90 grams) freshly grated Parmesan
2 egg yolks
1 1/4 teaspoons (7 grams, precisely) salt
Freshly grated nutmeg to taste (optional)
Freshly grated black pepper (optional and not traditional, but delicious).

To bake:
5 tablespoons (70 grams grams) melted unsalted butter
3/4 cup (70 grams) freshly grated Pecorino cheese

Directions:
Put the milk in a pot along with the butter, salt, and a few gratings of nutmeg if you want, or if you’re me, leave out the nutmeg and go for some grounds of black pepper. As soon as the milk starts to reach a boiling point, add the semolina. Whisk the semolina with the milk and let it cook for a minute or so, or until the semolina starts to thicken. Turn off the heat and add the egg yolks to the semolina mixture; whisk until incorporated, and then add the Parmesan and mix thoroughly. Taste to see if you need any more salt or pepper.

Pour the resulting mixture on to a baking sheet; use an offset spatula to spread the mixture out until it is about 1 centimeter thick. Smooth out the top. Let the mixture cool completely. Preheat the oven to 250 degrees F (170 degrees C).

Once cool, cut the semolina out in to rounds using a cookie cutter or a glass that is around 6 centimeters in diameter. Place the cut out semolina circles into a buttered baking dish, overlapping them slightly one over the other. Pour melted butter over the gnocchi and sprinkle with grated Pecorino. Bake the gnocchi for 20-25 minutes in your preheated oven, or until bubbling and golden brown. Let the gnocchi cool slightly before serving, and dig in.