Gnocchi

Pre-heat oven to 350F. Poke a few small holes with a knife into the washed potatoes. Cut the pumpkin (or winter squash) into 2 wedges or halves and remove any seeds. Bake potatoes and pumpkin for 1.5-2 hours until both feel soft to the touch. Cut potatoes and pumpkin pieces in half lengthwise and let cool, cut side up, for 15 minutes or so until not much warmer than room temperature. Cut the skin off the pumpkin and scoop the flesh out of the potato skins. Squeeze the pumpkin and potato flesh through the potato ricer onto your largest cutting board and chop the mixture with a bench scraper for a few minutes until smooth. Sprinkle the fine sea salt and around 3 ounces of the flour over the mixture and work the flour into the dough by chopping it with the bench scraper. Sprinkle another ounce of flour and incorporate into the dough as before. Note that with anything but the driest varieties of pumpkin or squash (such as a marina di chioggia or kabocha squash) you'll want to incorporate several more ounces of flour in additional rounds. If the dough still feels wet or if you're unsure, add more. It's better to end up with gnocchi that are slightly firmer than they need to be than with something that dissolves in the boiling water. Knead the dough for a few minutes and slam it onto the cutting board to rid it of any remaining air or flour pockets. Shape the dough into an even log with a diameter of 3 inches or so, place it near the far edge of your cutting board, sprinkle some flour on top to prevent it from drying out and let it rest for 5 minutes.

Sprinkle the cutting board with some flour and slice a 3/4-inch piece off the cylinder with the bench scraper. Gently roll the piece on the board under your finger tips to form an even roll not much wider than a half inch. (If the roll doesn’t hold, work more flour into all of the dough until it does.) Repeat with two or three more pieces and align rolls next to each other, leaving half-inch gaps between them. Sprinkle rolls with some more flour. Cut the rolls with the bench scraper into gnocchi that are a tad longer than they are wide. Cut all 3 or 4 rolls simultaneously with each cut. Pat yourself on the shoulder for being a bona fide gnocchi factory. Sprinkle more flour onto two large plates and carefully place the gnocchi on the plates. Repeat these steps with the rest of the dough and place all of them on the two plates, sprinkling more flour where necessary to prevent the gnocchi from sticking to each other. At this point they can be frozen on the plates for later use (once frozen, gnocchi can be placed in a freezer bag) or kept out for immediate use.

Plating

Bring a large pot of liberally salted water to a gentle boil. While the water is heating, pick and wash the sage leaves and pat dry on a kitchen or paper towel. Heat butter in a large frying pan (not cast iron) over medium heat. Add sage and fry until crisp. Remove sage leaves from the pan and place onto some paper towel and continue heating the butter until browned but not burned. Remove pan from the heat.

Once the water is boiling, turn the heat under the butter pan back on, to low. Place fresh or frozen gnocchi in the water and stir the water once near the surface with a mesh skimmer (this is to gently prevent the gnocchi from getting stuck at the bottom or to each other). As soon as the gnocchi float to the surface move them from the water into the butter pan with the mesh skimmer. Fresh gnocchi only take a few moments to cook, frozen gnocchi will take a minute or two - if you wait too long, they will start to disintegrate in the water. Gently shake the pan to mix the gnocchi and the brown butter, plate immediately (again, to prevent the gnocchi from disintegrating) and sprinkle each plate with fleur de sel, sage leaves and grated Parmigiano-Reggiano.