Nonna’s Potatoes

Very easy and can be adjusted to your own tastes.

Ingredients:
 3o grams of butter
 Roughly 2 Tbsp. light olive oil
 1 large onion finely chopped
 About 1kg unwashed potatoes: peeled and chopped into chunks
Method:
1. In a medium sized saucepan, sauté butter, oil and onions on a
medium heat until golden and soft.
2. Peel and chop potatoes into desired chunks and add to the onion.
Mix together and continue to cook until potatoes start to stick a bit to
the pan.
3. Season with salt and pepper and add about half a chicken stock cube
and about half a cup of water.
4. Simmer slowly until potatoes soften, carefully adding more water if
you need to.
5. Once ready and on your plate, consider splashing on some vinegar
and mashing it into the spuds for an extra burst of flavour.
Nonna’s Gnocchi
Ingredients:
 About 1 and a half kg of floury potatoes (Nonna preferred Pontiacs) Don’t peel
them.
 2 Cups of plain flour and extra flour for bench surface and plates.
 1 Egg
 Nonna didn’t do this, but I suggest some freshly grated nutmeg
Method:
1. On a medium heat, boil potatoes in their skins until soft. Strain the spuds and allow
them to slightly cool and become dry - don’t let them get cold.
2. On a large clean surface, sprinkle a handfuls of flour.
3. Pour the 1 and a half cup of flour on the surface, smoothing a concave space for the
spuds.
3. Peel the warm potatoes and using the big steel masher, mash directly onto flour.
4. Crack the egg over the potatoes and sprinkle the grated nutmeg.
5. Gently mix and knead into a large ball, adding more flour if you need to. Don’t handle
the mixture too much and don’t add too much flour to avoid your little gnocchi (lumps)
from becoming hard.
6. Once you have your large ball, take out little chunks and roll into long snakes and rest
on floured surface and continue until whole mixture is done. (Don’t leave it for too long
as the mixture goes funny later in the water if you do)
7. Take a fork and slide it down each snake to leave lines on the surface and then with a
butter knife, slice them into little pieces.
8. Boil up a big pot of salted water and gather the gnocchi onto floured flat dinner
plates. Put the gnocchi into the water one at a time and when they rise up to the
surface, pull them out with a slotted spoon and place them into a big warmed bowl that
has some sugo in it.
9. Continue loading the plates and adding the gnocchi one at a time and then adding
your warm sugo until you finish.
10. Be prepared to spend a fair bit of time cleaning up afterwards.
Nonno’s Sugo Bianco
Ingredients:
50grams of butter
3 Tbsp. of light olive oil
1 large brown onion – chopped finely
1 handful of parsley – chopped finely
1 carrot – finely chopped
3 sticks of celery – finely chopped
3 cloves of garlic – finely chopped
About 5 sage leaves - finely chopped
A sprig of rosemary - finely chopped
1 kg of chopped scotch fillet steak.
1 and a half cups of white wine (one the sweet side)
(I usually ask the butcher to finely slice the fillet and then I chop it at home. If you want to make
it authentically like Nonna did, you shouldn’t mince it. Nonna used to also vary the sugo by
combining the beef with pork neck or using rump steak or veal – my personal preference is for
scotch fillet)

Method:
1. Here’s a big tip, the quality of your sugo depends on the quality of your soffritto - The slow
caramelising of the vegies and herbs before you add the meat. Begin by sautéing the onion in
the oil and butter on a medium heat. Once they begin to sweat, add the garlic, carrots and
celery and then pretty soon, all the herbs. Mix now and then but let the mixture slowly cook so
that it becomes very soft and caramelised.
2. Increase the heat to medium high and add the meat and mix until all the meat has lost the
bloody look about it.
3. Add the white wine and lower the temperature and allow to simmer for at least an hour.
4. When you are ready to use the sugo with pasta, take as much as you need for your pasta and
add a chicken stock cube, salt and pepper. Nonna never seasoned the big pot of sugo. She
added the seasoning as she cooked the pasta.