Your favourite Italian recipes: Gnocchi di patate con pesto alla Genevose!

We're almost half way through Flavours Italian recipe competition  and we are so please to have such a great response so far. Today's recipe is a special treat as it has been named as one of your most favourite Italian recipes! We persuaded our Italian chefs to share their secret recipe for making it the authentic Italian way and it's here for you:

Gnocchi di patate con pesto alla Genevose 

Ingredients for gnocchi (serves 6)

• 1 kg of potatoes
• 250 g of flour
• 1 egg
• pinch of salt & pepper
• parmesan (to sprinkle)

Boil the potatoes in plenty salted water, peel and smash them. Add immediately flour, salt and the egg, knead well to make sure that all the ingredients are blended; make a roll and cut in slices two fingers thick. Sprinkle some flour on your pastry board and roll every slice up, them cut all the rolls in small pieces, 2 cm each. Press every ‘gnocco’ (dumpling) on the grater, just to shape its faces. Cook in boiling water until they bob up, strain at once put in the dishes covered with pesto sauce and a pinch of parmesan.

Now, you can buy pesto but why not make your own? 

Ingredients for pesto:  

• 50 fresh basil leaves
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1 glass of olive oil
• 30 g of grated pecorino cheese
• 70 gr of parmesan cheese
• 30 g of pine nuts
• salt (as required)

Pesto is usually prepared with mortar and pestle: if you have one, put some leaves inside, the garlic and some sea salt. Mash the basil turning the pestle from the left to the right, and the mortar on the opposite, to obtain a green liquid from the leaves. Add the pine nuts, and mash again to reduce in cream. Add the cheese little by little, keeping on mix, and drizzle the olive oil. Blend all the ingredients to have a uniform gravy..Otherwise, use the technology and just put all the ingredients in your mixer for about a minute! You can keep your pesto in the freezer for a few months.

Buon divertimento! Enjoy and remember there's still time to join us in our next cooking holiday in Tuscany and learn to create more recipes the authentic Italian way !

Don't forget, Flavours Italian recipe competition on Facebook, Twitter  and Pinterest closes on Monday 31st March.