A Simple Gnocchi Recipe to Celebrate 25 Years of Lidia Bastianich on Public Television

25 Years with Lidia: A Culinary Jubilee premieres on WTTW and streaming via the PBS app on December 18 at 7:00 pm. 
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In 1998, an acclaimed Manhattan restaurateur and chef premiered a new television show on PBS teaching Italian recipes. Twenty-five years later, Lidia Bastianich is still on PBS, showcasing Italian and Italian-American cuisine, as well as exploring and celebrating immigrants and their foods in America, her own adopted country. The new special 25 Years with Lidia: A Culinary Jubilee celebrates that career as well as Bastianich's whole life, culminating in a dinner with friends from across her life such as Jacques Pépin and Chrisotpher Walken, whose father owned a bakery at which a teenaged Bastianich found work.

Bastianich first appeared on public television with Julia Child, who told her to do for Italian cuisine what Child had done for French cuisine. That appearance eventually led to Lidia's Italian Table in 1998, as well as scores of books and other shows. Through it all, Bastianich has included and embraced her family, from her late mother Erminia to her children and grandchildren.

The latter have appeared on Bastianich's shows over the years, and return for 25 Years with Lidia to make simple potato gnocchi with her. "They all know how to cook pretty well – not Lidia level – but they all know how to cook," Bastianich's daughter Tanya Bastianich Manuali says in the special. 

Try Bastianich's basic gnocchi recipe below. Once made, they should be cooked in boiling salted water from fresh or frozen and dressed with your choice of sauce and toppings.

As Bastianich always says, Tutti a tavola a mangiare!

Basic Potato Gnocchi

Ingredients

1 1/2 lbs baking potatoes, all roughly the same size
3/4 tsp salt
2 large eggs, beaten well
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for working with the dough

Directions

1. Put the potatoes, whole and skin-on, in a large pot with cold water covering them by at least 2 inches. Bring to a steady boil and cook just until they are easily pierced with a fork or sharp knife blade—don’t overcook or let the skins burst.

2. Lift potatoes from the water and let them drain briefly. Peel and press through a ricer or food mill as soon as you can,
while they’re still very hot, so their moisture will evaporate. Spread the riced potatoes in a thin layer on a baking sheet or
tray, sprinkle the salt all over and let them cool and dry for at least 20 minutes, preferably 2 to 3 hours.

3. To mix the dough, pile the dried potatoes in a large loose mound on a board or marble work surface. Pour the beaten
eggs over them, then sprinkle 1 cup of the flour on top. Using your hands, work in the eggs, mixing and moistening the flour and potatoes. Gather into a single mass and knead for several minutes, scraping in sticky bits from the board and your hands. Incorporate additional flour in small amounts, only as needed, until the dough is smooth, soft, and only slightly sticky. Avoid adding too much flour, which will make the gnocchi heavy and dry. Cover the dough with a towel and form into gnocchi or offelle as soon as possible.

4. To shape traditional gnocchi, cut the finished dough into 3 or 4 pieces. Dust the work surface and your hands with flour. Roll one piece of dough under your hands into a thick cylinder and gradually stretch it to a long rope, about 2/3-inch thick. With a sharp knife or dough cutter, slice the rope, crosswise, into 1/2-inch lengths; sprinkle pieces with flour.

5. Hold a dinner fork, tines downward at an angle, to your work surface. Place one of the cut sides of a piece of dough against the tines. With your lightly floured thumb, press into the dough on the other cut side and at the same time push it off the end of the fork onto a floured board. It will be hollow and curved where you pressed it and ridged on the side that rolled off the fork. Press and roll the other cut pieces into gnocchi, dust them with flour, and set in a single layer on a floured tray, not touching.

6. Small gnocchi should be cooked (or frozen) as soon as they are all shaped.