Potato Gnocchi with mushrooms, truffles and pinenuts

Leslie Hottiaux’s award-winning S. Pellegrino Young Chef 2016 recipe of potato gnocchi, mushrooms, pine nuts and truffle. It’s a little complicated but follow each step, it’s worth every bite. You can also watch Leslie and Trudi create the recipe here: https://vimeo.com/178109626

Ingredients

1½ kg Agria potatoes
1 cup rock salt
1½ kgs OO pasta flour
Pinch salt to taste
150g shiitake mushrooms
150g portobello mushrooms
150g oyster mushrooms
40g fresh Italian parsley
60g shallots
60g garlic
40g butter
250ml grapeseed oil
80g feta
20ml black truffle oil

Pine-nut brown butter and truffle cream ingredients:
150g unsalted butter
50g pinenuts
20g fresh oregano
250g creme fraiche
30g fresh truffle
20ml mushroom stock (your juices saved from cooking the filling)

To serve:
400g white button mushrooms
200g portobello mushrooms
50g fresh chives
Oregano flowers to garnish
300g aged Edam cheese

Method

Gnocchi:

Heat the oven to 190C.
Wash the potatoes, prick with a skewer, place in an oven tray with rock salt, for 1½ hours until cooked.
While still hot, scoop out the potato from the skin into a fine tamis [home cooks could push it through a fine sieve or potato ricer] and pass the cooked potato into a bowl. Add the flour and some salt and work the dough until it comes together (do not overwork). Leave to rest for 15 minutes.
Roll out the gnocchi dough with a rolling pin, to 3mm thick.
Cut the gnocchi sheet into 7cm x 7cm squares and pipe a tablespoon-sized dot of the filling on to the middle of the square. Fold the square, corner to corner, forming a triangle. Then shape the triangle to form a small tortellini.
Just before needed, blanch the gnocchi in seasoned boiling water for 3 minutes.

Accompaniment:

Slice the mushrooms, finely chop the parsley and brunoise shallots (julienne them and chop into 3mm dice).
Break the garlic bulb into individual cloves, place in a small pan, cover with oil, season. Confit the garlic cloves at 90C until nice and soft. Let the garlic cool, then peel. Reserve the oil for cooking the mushrooms.
Saute mushrooms in a hot pan with the garlic oil and season. Add parsley, shallots, butter, and the confit garlic at the end. Cook until the shallots are soft.
Drain the juices of the mushrooms into a sieve and leave to cool. Keep the juice for stock for the truffle cream, if making.
Chop cooked and cooled mushroom mixture into a brunoise, place in a bowl with feta and truffle oil and mix gently. Check seasoning and place the mix in a piping bag.

For the pinenut brown butter:

Place the butter in a pan, melt over a low heat.
Season with a little salt, then add pine nuts. Heat the mixture until the butter browns. Add oregano at the end and keep warm.

For the truffle cream:

Mix the creme fraiche and fresh truffle, add the cold mushroom stock and check seasoning. Refrigerate.

To serve:

Blanch the gnocchi. Place a spoon of truffle cream on a warm plate, followed by the blanched gnocchi. Cover with the pinenut brown butter and shave fresh button and portobello mushrooms on the top. Finish with grated Edam and oregano flowers, and shaved fresh black truffle, if available.

Leslie Hottiaux, Apero, K Rd, Auckland