Ingredients

Directions

• Preheat your oven to 400°F. Wash, pierce and bake the potatoes in their skins for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until they give when you squeeze them. Let them cool slightly, then peel them. I use a vegetable peeler but a carefully wielded sharp knife will do. If you have a potato ricer or food mill, use it to mash the potatoes until smooth, or mash with a fork until as smooth as possible. Place the mashed potatoes in a large bowl, add the butter and salt, and mix to combine. Cover the bowl and place the mashed potatoes in the refrigerator to chill until no longer warm. Remove the potatoes from the refrigerator, uncover the bowl, and add almost all of the flour and xanthan gum, reserving a few tablespoons. Mix with a spoon and then switch to kneading the dough together with clean hands. It should hold together well when squeezed and feel firm but not dry. If the dough seems too soft, add more flour by the teaspoonful and knead it in. You can always add more flour, but you can’t remove it so proceed carefully.

• Pull off pieces of dough about a handful at a time and place on a very lightly floured flat surface. Squeeze the dough firmly between your palms and then roll either between your palms or with your palms on the flat surface, pushing away from your body. Squeeze together any cracks in the dough with your fingers and roll into a cylinder. After you have rolled a few ropes, let them sit undisturbed for a few minutes to give the dough a chance to absorb the moisture of the potatoes.

• While the dough is sitting, bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil over medium-high heat. Once the water has boiled, cut the ropes into approximately 1-inch pieces with a sharp knife, and then mark each with the back of the tines of a large fork to make ridges. In batches of about 20, gently drop the dumplings into the boiling water and allow the gnocchi to cook for about 3 minutes, or until they all float to the top. Remove the cooked gnocchi with a slotted spoon and place on serving dishes. Repeat with the remaining dumplings. Serve immediately with tomato sauce, grated or shaved cheese, and fresh herbs, if you like.

• The raw, shaped individual dumplings can be frozen in a single layer on a baking sheet, then sealed in an airtight container for later use. Boil them from frozen, simply adding a minute or two to the boiling time.

• Adapted from Gluten-Free on a Shoestring: 125 Easy Recipes for Eating Well on the Cheap Second Edition, by Nicole Hunn. Excerpted by arrangement with Da Capo Lifelong, a member of the Perseus Books, LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc. Copyright © 2017.