Gnocchi with spicy tomato sauce, garlic oil and crispy potato skins recipe

I am not an especially patient cook. A recipe which calls for three hours of proving or includes the instruction to “leave overnight” leaves me rolling my eyes, particularly because I’m a shocker for not reading the recipe through before I begin so often realise too late that I won’t actually be able to eat the biscuits I’ve just slaved over for another 12 hours. I blame Rowntree's jelly. As a child I couldn’t understand why you had to wait so long for it to set.

It’s why the only bread I ever make is soda bread and the only cookies the kind that you can bake straight away. I’ll countenance a long marinade for a piece of meat or a brine for fish, but you can keep your puff pastry and your sourdough. Deferred gratification is lost on me.

I’ve watched these past weeks as people have taken on ever more elaborate cooking projects to pass the time during lockdown. While I love the idea of making pasta, I don’t have a pasta machine and can’t quite be faffed with all that rolling. A very simple gnocchi dough, however, I can get on board with.

I am usually in what I suspect is a small camp of people who never orders gnocchi. It’s something to do with the texture. Where’s the crunch? It’s often too rubbery and served very simply with something like butter and sage, which is lovely (far be it for me to turn my nose up at a buttery sauce) but I need more punch and crunch.

Enter a spicy tomato sauce, pillowy gnocchi crisped up in a pan, peppery garlic oil and crunchy shards of potato skin. This recipe requires just enough work that it feels like a proper cooking project, but you can eat it as soon as the gnocchi are ready.

I’ve set it out so that you can make the sauce and oil while the potatoes are in the oven, but you could of course make them well in advance.

Prep time: 30 minutes | Cooking time: 1 hour 20 minutes

SERVES

4

INGREDIENTS

For the gnocchi

• 1.25kg Maris Piper potatoes

• 250g plain flour, plus extra for dusting

• 2 eggs, beaten

• ½ tsp fine salt

For the tomato sauce

• Olive oil, for frying

• 2 garlic cloves, peeled and bashed

• 1 tsp chilli flakes

• 2 x 400g tins chopped tomatoes

• 1 tsp sugar

• 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

For the garlic oil 

• 2 garlic cloves, peeled

• 1 small bunch of basil

• 1 small bunch parsley

• 1 tsp flaky salt

• ½ lemon, juiced

• 200ml olive or rapeseed oil

METHOD

1. Preheat the oven to 200/gas 6.

2. Rinse the potatoes under cold water, prick them all over, then sprinkle plenty of salt on the damp skin. Bake in the oven for an hour or until completely cooked through. Remember when they are cooked to turn the heat up for the skins.

3. Meanwhile make the sauce. Set a saucepan with a lid over a low heat. Add a good glug of oil and the garlic. Let the cloves begin to take on some colour in the oil for a minute or two. Add the chilli flakes and cook for another minute. Add the tomatoes, sugar and balsamic along with plenty of salt and pepper. Bring to a simmer and cook with the lid on for 20 minutes, then with the lid off for ten.

4. To make the herby garlic oil, blitz the garlic, herbs and salt in a food processor. Add the lemon juice and then the oil. Add more oil if you want a looser consistency.

5. Return your attention to the gnocchi. When the potatoes are ready, remove from the oven and once they are cool enough to handle, scoop out the flesh, reserving the skins so you can crisp them up later.

6. Scatter the flour over your work surface along with the salt. Push the potato flesh through a ricer (or you can use a sieve) onto the flour. Using your hands, start to gently mix the potato and flour together. Before you’ve finished, make a well in the centre of the mixture and add the eggs. Bring it all together in a soft dough.

7. Dust the work surface with a little more flour. Then flatten the dough (just using your hands) into a rough square, about 1 cm high. Slice into strips about 1.5cm wide, then roll the strips into sausages. Cut them into little segments, about 2cm wide, dust with flour and put the finished gnocchi on a flour dusted tray.

8. 15 minutes before you’re ready to eat, toss the potato skins in a splash of oil and pop back in the hot oven to crisp up.

9. Bring a pan of well salted boiling water to a rolling boil. Tip in the gnocchi (it’s worth doing this in two batches depending on how big your pan is), then once they rise to the top, give them about ten seconds before removing them with a slotted spoon to a dish lined with kitchen roll.

10. Get a frying pan piping hot with a splash of oil. Add the gnocchi (again in batches) and let them crisp up a little, tossing them in the pan occasionally.

11. To serve, spoon the sauce over the gnocchi, top with a couple of crispy skins and a drizzle of oil.