On our last night in Rome before embarking on our third field trip to Tuscany, we gathered around large wooden cutting boards getting ready to make fresh gnocchi with the amazing Anna Rita. It’s no secret among the Cornell community that Anna Rita is an amazing chef. As a matter of fact, there’s a drawing of her wearing a large chef hat that hangs over her desk. For this reason, we were already excited to learning her skills of making gnocchi.
As students starting coming into the workshop after a long day in studio Anna Rita presented to us all our ingredients. There were four of the largest piles of potato mash probably any of us have ever seen. Along with that we had a carton of eggs, and about half a dozen bags of flour.
In the center of the potato piles, we cracked a couple eggs and added a considerably amount of flour. Some of us watched from the sides, while some of us were excited to get covered in flour as we volunteered to knead the mix until it was just right.
When the dough was the right consistency we cut off smaller pieces to roll into long strips.
From these strips we would cut smaller amount that would be handed off to then get rolled into gnocchi pieces.
We all laughed at how the most difficult part of the night was actually rolling these little pieces into gnocchi. Anna Rita would come by your side and show you in one swift motion the correct way to roll the gnocchi so it has the perfect indent in the center. She said it was easy, but a lot of us would disagree. We would laugh at how sad looking our pieces looked like compared to hers.
By the end of the night we had what looked like a thousand gnocchi pieces, none of which looked the way Anna Rita showed us, but all were eventually going to be very tasty.
After having a significant amount of gnocchi ready, a group of students went off to the kitchen with Anna Rita and Annalisa to start boiling the pasta. Piles of gnocchi went in and went out of the pot. Soon we had different bowls of gnocchi with different types of sauces Anna Rita had prepared before hand.
Students were all over the place: in the workshop rolling the last bit of the dough, in the kitchen boiling up the pasta, or in the classroom setting up the table for our feast. Overall one may say the night was a success. In the peak of midterms it was great to spend some time making food together.
Infinite thanks to Anna Rita and Annalisa.