Not Just Another Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Brown Butter Sage Sauce Post

I know what you're thinking: Does the world really need another post about sweet potato gnocchi? Particularly, you may be saying to yourself,  a gnocchi with a brown butter, brown-butter-sage, brown-butter-sage-and-Parmesan, or any other permutation of brown butter sauce?

But please indulge me! Perhaps you will forgive me if I divulge the following facts:

1. This was my very first homemade gnocchi; in fact, it was my first homemade pasta of any kind. You only make your first pasta once, after all.
2. I had a lot of extra sweet potatoes sitting around from my CSA. In a way, I had no choice but to turn them into gnocchi.
and
3. Poppa Trix and I actually made it together, and it was fun, and he finds the whole thing so exciting that ever since we made it he has been badgering me non-stop to post this.  So even though I will admit that there has been something of a glut of sweet potato and butternut squash gnocchi posts floating around the interwebs of late, I've decided to post this anyway. They really were fun to make, they came out astonishingly well for a first try, and when I told Poppa Trix I didn't really know if I was going to do a post about them after all he looked so sad I gave in.

Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Brown Butter Sage Sauce
About  3 cups of cooked, peeled sweet potato, cut into chunks
2 cups all purpose flour, plus extra for dusting
1 egg
sal & pepper, to taste

Mash the sweet potato

 Add the eggs, a few pinches of salt & pepper, and the flour. Mix with a fork. Your dough should be slightly sticky, but workable.

Transfer to a work surface, and make ropey tubes, about 1/2 inch in diameter

 

Our ropes may not have been precisely symmetrical. ...

Let the dough rest in the refrigerator for about a half hour. Next, cut the ropes into 1 inch pieces and score with a fork. Look at all those plump little starchy soldiers just waiting to be boiled!

 

To cook, plop into boiling water, and, as Mario Batali says, don't just wait until they float - wait until they're trying to escape the pot.  For the sauce, there's really no need to measure. Just brown some butter (by cooking over medium heat until you pick up that distinctive nutty smell just as the butter begins to brown - but not burn!), toss in some sage leaves and let them crisp up like little chips, a dash of salt and pepper, combine with your gnocchi and then - heaven.

I cannot believe I've never made this before. What on earth was I waiting for? I know they don't look perfect - they're not all uniform, and I can certainly work on my fork scoring. But they were light, and pillowy, and short of eating a just-laid egg, about as fresh as food can get. So even if you've read a ton of these gnocchi posts and haven't made your own yet, I hope this post has inspired you to try it for yourself.