Italian Ricotta Gnocchi with Four Cheese Sauce | Gnocchi di Ricotta ai Quattro Formaggi
A ricotta gnocco is not a potato gnocco with cheese in it. Potato gnocchi are built on cooked starch, which absorbs water, binds and tolerates a heavy hand. Ricotta offers none of that. It is a curd, cooked once already and holding all the water it intends to hold, and the only structure in the dumpling comes from egg yolk, grated cheese and the least flour the cook can get away with.
The four cheese sauce is the other half of the problem. Four melted cheeses very easily become one loud salty cheese, and a sauce built for a soft curd dumpling has to be rich without turning heavy. The answer is not less cheese but four that do different jobs, melted in the right order at a temperature that cannot break them.
What follows is the restaurant version: the ricotta drained and weighed, the flour treated as a cost rather than an ingredient, the sauce built off the heat, and toasted hazelnuts for the one texture the plate otherwise lacks.
Yield: 4 servings. Drain: 12 hours, unattended. Prep: 45 minutes. Cook: 15 minutes. Total: about 13 hours, of which roughly 1 hour is work. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: primo piatto. Region: central Italy for the ricotta, northern Italy for the four cheeses.
The Story
Fresh ricotta belongs to the sheep dairy country of central Italy, the belt of high pasture running through Lazio, Abruzzo, Umbria and the Marche that fed Rome for two thousand years. Ricotta was never the product. Pecorino was, and ricotta is what the shepherd recovered afterwards from the whey left in the kettle, heated a second time until the remaining albumin rose in soft white flakes. The name says exactly that: recooked.
Gnocchi di ricotta are one of those dishes, older and simpler than the potato version, which could not exist in Italy until the potato became common in the nineteenth century. A cheesemaking household had fresh curd, eggs from the yard and a handful of flour, and half an hour later it had dinner. In the Roman and Umbrian versions the dumplings were often poached in the whey itself rather than in plain water, which tells you how little the dish was ever meant to travel beyond the dairy that made it.
The four cheese sauce, by contrast, is a twentieth century plate and nobody should pretend otherwise. Gorgonzola comes from the Lombard plain, Fontina from the high valleys of the Valle d'Aosta, Taleggio from the Bergamasque foothills, Parmigiano Reggiano from Emilia. No traditional kitchen anywhere in Italy had all four in the larder at once. They reached the same menu only after the refrigerated distribution networks of the nineteen fifties, and quattro formaggi spread through restaurants and pizzerie during the boom years. That it sits so well on a central Italian dumpling is an accident of the modern table rather than an inheritance.
Ingredients
For the ricotta gnocchi
Whole milk ricotta, sheep or cow, 1 lb 2 oz (500 g) before draining, about 14 oz (400 g) after
Egg yolks, large, 2
Parmigiano Reggiano aged 24 months, finely grated, 1 3/4 oz (50 g)
Italian 00 flour, 3/4 cup (100 g), plus 2 tbsp (16 g) in reserve
Fine sea salt, 1/2 tsp (3 g)
Freshly grated nutmeg, a few rasps
Coarse sea salt for the cooking water, 2 tbsp (35 g)
For the four cheese sauce
Fontina Val d'Aosta DOP, rind removed, diced small, 2 1/2 oz (70 g)
Taleggio DOP, rind removed, diced small, 2 oz (55 g)
Gorgonzola Dolce DOP, rind removed, diced small, 2 oz (55 g)
Parmigiano Reggiano aged 30 months, finely grated, 1 1/2 oz (40 g)
Whole milk, 1/2 cup (120 ml)
Heavy cream, 1/4 cup (60 ml)
Unsalted butter, 1 tbsp (14 g)
Freshly ground white pepper, to taste
For finishing
Hazelnuts, whole and unskinned, 1 oz (30 g)
Unsalted butter, 1 tbsp (14 g)
Fresh thyme leaves, 1 tsp
Parmigiano Reggiano, shaved, 1/2 oz (15 g)
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Preparation
Drain the ricotta and weigh what you lose
Line a sieve with two layers of cheesecloth, set it over a bowl, tip in the ricotta and fold the cloth over the top. Rest a small plate and a 1 lb (450 g) weight on it and refrigerate for 12 hours. Weigh the curd before and after: 1 lb 2 oz (500 g) of good ricotta comes down to about 14 oz (400 g), a loss of roughly one fifth.
Mix the dough in one bowl and stop early
Break the drained curd up with a fork until it is even, then work in the yolks, the grated Parmigiano, the salt and the nutmeg. Add the flour in two additions and fold rather than knead. Stop the instant it holds together softly and clears the side of the bowl, about 30 seconds of work in total. A smooth dough is a worked dough, and a worked dough poaches into rubber.
Roll and cut on a floured board
Turn the mass onto a board dusted with 00 flour. Divide it into four and roll each piece into a rope about 3/4 inch (2 cm) thick, using as little pressure as you can and reflouring the board instead of the dough. Cut the ropes into pillows about 3/4 inch (2 cm) long. Do not press ridges into them: a ricotta gnocco has no structure to spare and the ridges close up in the water anyway.
Poach one test gnocco before you commit
Bring a small pan of salted water to a bare simmer and drop in a single gnocco. It should sink, hold its shape, rise within 90 seconds and come out whole, tender through with no chalky flour taste at the centre. If it frays or dissolves, fold the reserved 2 tablespoons (16 g) of flour into the dough and test again.
Toast the hazelnuts in thyme butter
Heat the oven to 325°F (165°C) and toast the hazelnuts on a small tray for 8 to 10 minutes, until they smell sweet and the skins loosen. Rub them in a dry towel, then crush them coarsely under the flat of a knife. Melt the butter in a small pan, add the nuts and the thyme and swirl over low heat for a minute, until the butter turns pale gold.
Build the four cheese sauce off the heat
Warm the milk, the cream and the butter in a wide saucepan until the surface trembles, around 150°F (65°C), then take the pan off the heat completely. Add the Fontina first and stir until it has gone, then the Taleggio, then the Gorgonzola, and the Parmigiano last. Return the pan to the lowest flame only if the mixture stalls, and never let it simmer. Season with white pepper and no salt at all for now.
Cook the gnocchi and marry them to the sauce
Bring a wide shallow pan of water to the boil with the coarse salt, then drop the heat until the surface barely moves, around 195°F (90°C). A rolling boil tears ricotta gnocchi apart. Slide them in in two batches and lift them out with a spider 60 to 90 seconds after they rise. Tip them into the warm sauce and fold gently with a rubber spatula, adding cooking water a tablespoon at a time until the sauce coats every dumpling and slides. Taste for salt only now.
Plating
Warm the bowls, but only just. A plate hot enough to sting the hand carries the cheese sauce past the temperature at which it holds together, and it will separate somewhere between the pass and the table. Around 120°F (50°C) is right.
Spoon the gnocchi into the centre of each bowl in a loose low mound rather than a pile, so the sauce settles around the base instead of running off the top. Scatter the hazelnuts and their thyme butter over and around them, add a few shavings of Parmigiano and one turn of black pepper. Nothing green is wanted: the plate is deliberately monochrome and the hazelnut is its only contrast. Serve at once, because the dish has a window of about four minutes.
Professional Technique
The controlling variable is the ratio of flour to drained curd. Every gram of flour buys structure and costs tenderness, so the right quantity is the smallest one that survives the water. At 3/4 cup (100 g) of flour to 14 oz (400 g) of drained ricotta the dough sits at about a quarter of the curd weight. Push it to a third and the gnocchi hold beautifully and eat like erasers.
The sauce is an emulsion problem dressed up as a melting problem. Cheese is fat suspended in a casein network, and heat above roughly 175°F (80°C) makes that network contract and squeeze the fat out as a slick. The milk and cream add water and casein that keep the network open, and working off the heat holds the mixture inside the 140 to 160°F (60 to 71°C) band where the cheeses flow without tightening.
Each of the four is there for one job. Fontina Val d'Aosta is the melter, high in moisture and fat, and carries the structural work. Taleggio supplies the washed rind aroma that makes the sauce smell of something rather than merely of dairy. Gorgonzola Dolce brings salt and a blue tang that stops it cloying. Parmigiano Reggiano supplies glutamate and length, and goes in last because it is the one most likely to turn stringy.
Texture and Moisture Control
Three things have to be true at the table: the gnocchi tender almost to the point of collapse but still whole, the sauce glossy and pourable rather than elastic, the hazelnuts audibly crisp. The dumplings toughen with flour and disintegrate without it. The nuts soften within a minute of sitting in the sauce, which is why they go on top at the last moment and never into the pan.
The cooking water is the adjustment tool for everything else. Ricotta gnocchi shed very little starch compared with potato gnocchi or dried pasta, so that water is thinner than you may expect and loosens a cheese sauce far more than it binds one. Add it in single tablespoons and wait five seconds between them. If the sauce has gone too far, the correction is not more cheese but half a minute of gentle folding off the heat while it tightens on its own.
Temperature discipline runs through the whole dish. The poaching water sits at about 195°F (90°C), below a simmer. The sauce lives between 140 and 160°F (60 and 71°C). The bowl should reach the table at around 150°F (65°C).
Professional Mise en Place
This is a dish with a long passive stage and a very short active one. The draining happens the night before, the gnocchi can be shaped hours ahead, and everything else happens inside about eight minutes.
Equipment and tools
Sieve, cheesecloth and a small weight for the overnight drain
Kitchen scale reading in grams, for the curd and the flour
Plastic bench scraper for folding and for cutting the ropes
Wide shallow pan for poaching and a spider skimmer
Heavy saucepan for the sauce, plus a probe thermometer
Prepared ahead
Ricotta drained overnight, weighed, kept cold until it goes into the bowl
Gnocchi shaped up to 4 hours ahead on a floured tray, uncovered, refrigerated
Cheeses derinded and diced small, up to 1 day ahead in a sealed box
Hazelnuts toasted, skinned and crushed on the day
Parmigiano grated fresh, never bought ready grated
Service setup
Poaching water salted and holding just below a simmer, lid off
Sauce built and held over a bain marie at about 150°F (65°C)
Thyme butter and hazelnuts warm in their pan, off the heat
Ladle of cooking water reserved before the gnocchi come out
Bowls warmed to hand temperature only, never hot from an oven
Chef Tips
Buy ricotta from a cheese counter rather than a long dated tub. Supermarket ricotta is usually stabilised so that it will not weep on the shelf, which is exactly the property you do not want, since you need it to weep before it reaches the dough.
Weigh the flour instead of measuring it in a cup. A cup of 00 flour scooped straight from the bag can carry 20 g more than a cup spooned in and levelled, and at these quantities that difference is the whole margin between tender and tough.
If the sauce does break, take it off the heat, add a tablespoon of cold milk and whisk hard from the centre outwards. The cold liquid drops the temperature below the point at which the casein is contracting and often pulls the fat back in. Reheating a broken sauce, or adding more cheese to it, makes the damage permanent.
Shaped gnocchi freeze better than they refrigerate. Spread them apart on a floured tray, freeze them solid for about 2 hours, then bag them for up to 1 month and poach them from frozen with 30 seconds longer in the water.
Common Mistakes
Using the ricotta straight from the tub. Undrained ricotta carries so much whey that the only way to make a dough of it is to keep adding flour, and every spoonful is paid for in texture.
Kneading the dough. Ricotta dough asks to be folded a dozen times, not worked. Kneading develops gluten in flour that is there only to bind, and the result poaches firm and chews like an eraser instead of dissolving on the tongue.
Boiling the gnocchi hard. A rolling boil batters a curd dumpling and the edges start shedding into the water within seconds. Keep the surface just moving at around 195°F (90°C), and lift each gnocco out as soon as it rises.
Letting the cheese sauce simmer. Past roughly 175°F (80°C) the casein network contracts and the fat separates out as a yellow slick, and no amount of stirring reverses it. Build the sauce off the heat and hold it over a bain marie.
Salting the sauce before tasting the dish. Gorgonzola, Taleggio and Parmigiano are all salty, and the cooking water adds more when the gnocchi are folded in. Season at the very end.
Wine Pairing
Franciacorta DOCG: The classic answer to a sauce this rich. Bottle fermented in the Lombard hills near Brescia, it brings a fine persistent bead that lifts the fat off the palate, plus the bread and almond notes of long lees ageing that run alongside the Parmigiano. Choose a Brut rather than an Extra Brut.
Alto Adige Gewürztraminer DOC: Dry, high in glycerol and unmistakably perfumed with rose, lychee and candied citrus peel. That aromatic weight is what lets it stand up to Taleggio, a cheese that flattens most whites, and the faint bitterness on the finish keeps the match from turning sweet.
Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi Classico Riserva DOCG: A white with real structure from the Marche, aged long enough to build texture without losing its spine of acidity. It has the body to sit alongside a cheese sauce rather than under it, and the bitter almond note it always finishes on works with the toasted hazelnut.
Collio Friulano DOC: Grown on the marl and sandstone of the Friulian border hills and built around a savoury almond and pear character with firm acidity. It works in the opposite way to the Gewurztraminer, scrubbing the palate clean between mouthfuls rather than meeting the cheese head on.
Alto Adige DOC Pinot Nero: For anyone who wants a red with a cheese sauce, and the only kind that works. Light in colour, low in tannin and high in acidity, with red cherry and undergrowth aromas that pick up the washed rind side of the Taleggio. Serve it at around 57°F (14°C).
Storage & Reheating
Raw shaped gnocchi keep on a floured tray, uncovered in the refrigerator, for up to 4 hours and no longer. Beyond that, freeze them spread apart on a tray for 2 hours, then bag them for up to 1 month.
The cheese sauce can be made up to 2 days ahead and refrigerated in a sealed container. Rewarm it in a bowl over barely simmering water, stirring, and loosen it with a tablespoon or two of warm milk as it softens. Never rewarm it over direct heat or in a microwave, both of which drive it past the temperature where it holds together.
Gnocchi already dressed in the sauce are not worth saving, but if you must, refrigerate them in a shallow covered dish for up to 1 day and reheat them in a wide pan over low heat with 3 tbsp (45 ml) of milk, folding constantly until the sauce flows again. Never freeze them cooked and sauced: the curd goes grainy and the emulsion separates on thawing.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 4 servings:
Calories: 680 kcal
Total Fat: 45 g
Saturated Fat: 24 g
Trans Fat: 1 g
Unsaturated Fat: 18 g
Cholesterol: 215 mg
Sodium: 1150 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 28 g
Fiber: 1.5 g
Total Sugars: 6 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 34 g
Lactose: 4 g
Principal micronutrients: calcium, phosphorus, vitamin A, vitamin B2, vitamin B12, zinc, selenium
These figures are estimates. Sodium in particular follows the three DOP cheeses far more than any salt you add, and the total depends on how much salted cooking water is carried into the pan with the gnocchi.
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