Marco Canora
Chef-owner, Hearth
New York, New York
Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats; chef Marco
Canora is ready to make his signature gnocchi—a gnocchi so good
that William Grimes of The New York Times once referred to a
bowl of it as “lightweight and butter-laden, each dollop an eye-
rolling pleasure bomb.”
Please be advised that there are no tricks up Canora’s sleeve;
everything that you’re about to see is 100 percent real. “All you
need to make great gnocchi is potatoes and flour,” explains Canora
in the kitchen of his New York apartment, wielding a tray of Idaho
potatoes hot from the oven.
When asked where he got his gnocchi recipe—from his
grandmother? a trip to Italy?—Canora will answer, matter-of-
factly, “I just came up with it. I knew the less liquid I had, the less
flour I’d have to use and the lighter the gnocchi would be.”
How does he extract the liquid from the potatoes? Observe as
he takes the extremely hot potatoes (they baked for more than an
hour at 350°F) and slices them in half to expose the maximum
amount of surface area. Watch as he scoops out the insides into a
ricer and then rices the potato all over his kitchen counter. Pay
attention as he spreads it out with a spoon and then stabs, stabs,