Gnocchi alla romana is an ancient first or side dish, prepared with a great range of varied flour types. This particular dish is made with selmolina durum flour. It is not always that easy to get and searching for it on the web will often get you in the direction of semola, which just mean flour in Italian.
It is tradition in in Rome to eat Gnocchi alla romana on Thursday, fish on Friday and tribe on Saturday. These gnocchi is probably consumed the day before to compensate for the lighter fish the day after.
4 persons
Cooking time : 1 hrs. 30 min.
Pour the milk into a pot and bring it to boil with the salt, a pinch of finely grated nutmeg and a two third of the butter
Add the semolina flour slowly, while whipping vigorously with a whisk, to prevent it from lumping
Cook the mixture over low heat for a few minutes, until it has thickened, then remove the pot from the heat
Add the two egg yolks and stir well with a wooden spoon. Add two thirds of the cheese and stir again, until everything is mixed well
Now pour the still hot mixture onto a sheet of parchment paper and flatten it out to a thickness of around 1,5 cm/half inch with another parchment paper on top, creating an even surface. (Be careful not to get your fingers burned in the process!)
Let the mixture cool down a bit and remove the upper piece of parchment paper
When cooled down and it has settled, take a glass, cup or biscuit cutter with a diameter of around 5-7 cm and cut out as many 1,5 cm thick circular dumplings as possible.
The dumplings are placed in a (butter)greased baking dish, layered and overlapping each other topped with the rest of the cheese and the rest of the butter that has been melted. Put into the oven under the grill until golden brown and bubbling.
Serve your gnocchi alla romano hot as a hearty starter or side dish
If you cant’t get semolina flour, you could make this dish with precooked polenta flour. The result will also be amazing, but it will not be very roman, but more an ‘luxurious’ version of the polenta of the North.
Another quite smart way of creating the dumplings is to make a cylindrical roll of the boiling mix (make two batches) using parchment paper. When cooled down and settled, slice the dumpling with a moist knife. This will eliminate waste.
I have seen versions where the cheese for gratinating is pecorino, which would make sense since pecorino is the ‘parmesan of Rome’.
This dish can be cooked and prepped and stored up to 2 days in the refrigerator. Just place them in the oiled baking dish, topped with butter and cheese and covered with plastic wrap. Take it out of the fridge 45 mins before serving and follow the baking instructions
