Homemade Gnocchi with Pesto, Peas, and Smoked Salmon!

My first date with my fiance was a Friday night and ever since then, Friday has been date night. Tonight for a special treat, my fiance's little brother joined us from dinner (he lives in a different state so its a big deal that he is visiting), so we went extra all-out and made an amazing homemade Italian-inspired dinner.

This menu was partially inspired by my brand new Oxo ricer, which my fiance and I got earlier this week as an engagement present, and I have been wanting to try.

Ricers are supposed to make extra wonderful gnocchi because they end up incorporating air into the potatoes which makes them fluffy. It was my first time doing it this way and I can definitely vouch for the extra fluffiness.

Another great thing about the ricer is that it does not require that you remove the skins before ricing. The skins simply fail to pass through and are left behind after all the potato insides have been extruded, this saved a lot of time.

I should add, and you can tell from the picture, that it wasn't 100% perfect at avoiding skin, but it was easy enough to pick out the skin bits and still definitely a time saver over peeling potatoes.

One of the great things about making homemade gnocchi is that it only uses four ingredients and you probably already have them at home. They are (1) flour (2) potatoes (3) 2 eggs, and (4) a pinch of salt.

Contrary to what you will see if you search the internet for gnocchi recipes, the best gnocchi have more potato than flour, but how much flour you need really depends on the quality of the potato and should be added by feel rather than strictly following a recipe. You have the right amount when the dough is just barely together enough that you can roll it into logs but is still a little annoyingly sticky. You can see mine below in both a ball form and when I made the first couple logs.

While I was forming the gnocchi, I set a pot of salted water to boil, so as soon as they were formed I was ready to cook them. Cook time depends on how big you make them, but you will know they are done when they start to float up like this:

After cooking them, some people like to saute them in olive oil or butter; this is delicious, but not what I was going for tonight, so I let them boil just a little bit longer after they started to float since that was all the cooking they were going to get.

Finally, I topped them with my homemade pesto sauce (my fiance's favorite), some peas, chopped up smoked salmon, pine nuts, and parmesan reggiano cheese.

Thanks for reading! If you have any tips or tricks for delicious gnocchi, let me know in the comments section below! If you think my gnocchi look tasty, please upvote and follow!