Chicken and Gnocchi Soup, Olive Garden Style

Olive Garden Style Chicken and Gnocchi Soup

Me: “Mom, I’ve got some leftover uncooked gnocchi that I didn’t need in the soup. Should I put them in the fridge and cook them tomorrow or cook them now and reheat them tomorrow?”

Mom: “Yokey? What’s Yokey?”

Me: “Not “yokey” mom, “nee-okkee”- do you understand?”

Mom: “I can’t understand what you’re talking about.”

Me: “They’re like little potato dumplings from Italy.”

Mom: “Oh. Why didn’t you just say they were potato dumplings?”

Me: “Well, what’s the fun in that? Gnocchi sounds much more exciting, don’t you think?”

For a treat last week we went out to the Olive Garden restaurant and the boys tried their chicken and gnocchi soup. They gave it a big thumbs up, so I figured this was something I should add to the list of dinner options at home. Mid-Sunday afternoon, not sure what to make for dinner. It’s a little cooler (last week was not great soup weather), so I figure I’ll give it a try. I go hunting on the internet and come up with two recipes. Neither seems quite right to me, so I combine the two and give a head nod to my cheese soup recipe and this is what I came up with:

Olive Garden Style Chicken and Gnocchi Soup Recipe

1/3 cup butter
2-3 cloves of minced garlic
1/2 cup onion, finely chopped
1 lb. chicken cubed or large chunks
1/3 cup flour
1/2 carrot shredded or finely chopped
1 stick of celery, finely chopped
1 cup fresh spinach torn in pieces
4 cups chicken broth
2 cups heavy cream
1-2 cups whole milk (optional, if you prefer a thinner soup)
Cracked pepper to taste
½ tsp curry powder
17.6 oz. of frozen Gnocchi (I made fresh)

Melt butter in a soup pot, add in the garlic and onions and sauté, add your chicken and cook throughout. Add flour and stir in flour and mix well until the flour is cooked into the chicken. Next add your chicken broth. Mix well, cook for a few minutes and then add the veggies (Carrots, Celery, and Spinach). Cook for about 5 minutes. Since I made fresh gnocchi, I brought this to a gentle boil, added gnocchi and cooked for about 3 minutes. Then I reduced heat and added cream, milk, curry and pepper. Mix ingredients well. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

This claimed to only take ten minutes to assemble and half an hour to cook. I beg to differ. Mine evolved over the course of a couple of hours, but then again I went out and picked my own spinach, made my own gnocchi, made a loaf of French bread to go with the soup and had company in and out of the house while cooking.

The most time consuming part was probably the gnocchi. They’re not difficult, just “putsy”. Here’s the basic recipe:

Basic Potato Gnocchi
from http://italianfood.about.com/od/gnocchi/a/aa010298.htm

• 1/2 pounds, mealy potatoes, peeled
• About 1/2 cup flour (see note below)
• A pinch of salt

(Note: I added a little cream of wheat, like my mom does with her potato dumplings.  Sometimes I add a small egg, too.)

In making gnocchi you should steam the potatoes rather than boil them. If you do not have a steamer, put the potatoes in a metal colander, set the colander in a spaghetti pot, fill the pot with water to just below the colander, and set the pot, covered, to boil. The potatoes will be done in 30-45 minutes, when a skewer penetrates but they are still firm. Peel them and mash them while they’re still hot (a potato ricer works very well here). Season the potatoes with a pinch of salt and slowly knead in enough flour to obtain a fairly firm, smooth, non-sticky dough — exactly how much flour will depend upon how moist the potatoes are.

Roll the dough out into snakes about as thick as your finger, cut the snakes into one-inch pieces, and gently score the pieces crosswise with a fork. As an alternative to scoring with a fork, Bugialli suggests you gently press them against the inside of a curved cheese grater, to obtain a curved shape with a depression on one side. The choice is up to you.

Cook the gnocchi in abundant salted boiling water, removing them with a slotted spoon a minute or two after they rise to the surface. Drain them well and serve them with a few leaves of sage, melted unsalted butter and Parmigiano, or meat sauce, or pomarola, or pesto.

So, first we steam them.

Then we mash them – the smoother the better.

I missed photos of the ropes, but here are the pretty little dumplings ready to meet their fate.

And here’s the end result…

Update 3/10/11:  Since I originally did this post, I’ve made this soup many times, typically the day after we have a chicken dinner with mashed potatoes (you can use the chicken carcass to make the broth, too).  This dramatically cuts down on the time involved with the soup, since the chicken and potatoes are already precooked, and “chicken and gnocchi soup” goes over much better in my house than “leftover chicken and mashed potatoes”.  I use a cup or two of mashed potatoes – whatever I have handy.  Then I add flour and sometimes some cream of wheat cereal (my mom always added cream of wheat to her potato dumplings), and sometimes an egg for extra protein.  These little dumplings are a little more dense than the original gnocchi, but just as tasty.