Making homemade pasta is much easier than you think! Just follow the simple steps in this recipe for gluten-free, vegan gnocchi from The Plantpower Way: Italia, and you’ll have dinner on the table in no time! Serve it with a simple red tomato sauce and macadamia parmesan for the ultimate meal. This easy recipe is vegan, dairy-free, and gluten-free.
Gluten-Free Vegan Gnocchi
I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like Italian food. There’s just something about starchy noodles, creamy sauces, and cheesy pizzas that pretty much everyone can agree is delicious. Pasta and pizza are quite often the default meals of choice when one goes vegetarian. But once you’ve gone vegan and have given up cheese, what do you do? Make vegan versions, of course!
While I’m certainly not an expert, I’ve made my own pasta quite a few times. I bought a pasta maker while I was taking Rouxbe’s Plant-Based Pro course a few years ago, and I’ve made my own ravioli and noodles several times. I wanted to try something new with The Plantpower Way: Italia, so I opted to make gnocchi first.
How to Make Vegan Gnocchi
Gnocchi is super easy to make, because it doesn’t require a pasta maker. This is a really good recipe for pasta-making newbies.
- You simply boil potatoes and then mix them together with flour and a few other ingredients to make a dough.
- You then roll out dough cut and cut it. Easy peasy!
Getting the lumps out of the dough was a little trickier than I expected, but I was able to accomplish it with the help of a potato masher. After that, the recipe was super simple. I don’t have a wooden pasta board, so I just used a fork to score my gnocchi.
Serving Your Vegan Gnocchi
This gnocchi is served with a really easy-to-make red sauce, but the star of the dish is the Macadamia Parmesan. I’m glad the recipe makes a lot of it, because I will be crumbling this cheese over pretty much everything from now on.
The red sauce was a little on the thin side, so I didn't need to add water, as the recipe suggests. Since it was a little thin, I added a little tomato paste to thicken it up a little.
The Plantpower Way: Italia
The Plantpower Way: Italia by Julie Piatt and Rich Roll is loaded with healthy, vegan versions of everyone’s Italian food favorites, from Cheesy Pesto and Creamy Garlic Gorgonzola to Classic Eggplant Parmesan and Pizza Margherita. Of course, there are many pasta recipes as well, including Ravioli and Truffle Cashew Fettuccini Alfredo. Plenty of Italian-inspired desserts are included too, such as Gluten-Free and Dairy-Free Tiramisu and Creamy Lemon Gelato.
With the The Plantpower Way: Italia you’ll learn how to make your own cheeses, sauces, and even pastas. The sauces and cheeses come together super quickly, so there’s really no excuse for not making your own. The pasta recipes are much easier than you would think, as you’ll see from the gnocchi recipe below.
The Plantpower Way: Italia is a gorgeous book. It’s a beautiful hardcover that’s loaded with mouthwatering photos of the recipes as well as fun pictures of authors Julie Piatt and Rich Roll enjoying time in Italy. This is a book you’ll want to keep on display on your coffee table rather than stash away in your bookcase.
Chapters in The Plantpower Way: Italia include:
- Blends and Breakfast
- Sauces, Spreads, and Cheeses
- Pizzas
- Antipasta and Contorni
- Pasta and Primo
- Salads and Soups
- Desserts
I’m looking forward to making more recipes from this The Plantpower Way: Italia. I have Lobster Mushroom Risotto and Orange Chocolate Raw Pie bookmarked. If you love Italian food, you need this book in your life.
Gluten-Free & Dairy-Free Gnocchi
Ingredients
- 2 medium yellow potatoes about 2 cups
- ¼ cup organic fine corn flour rice flour, or other gluten-free flour, plus extra for kneading and rolling
- 1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
- 1 tablespoon olive oil plus more for drizzling
- 1 teaspoon Celtic sea salt
- 1 ½ cups Simply Red Tomato Sauce (recipe below)
- ½ cup Macadamia Parmesan (recipe below)
- 1 bunch fresh basil, thinly sliced
- Freshly cracked black pepper to taste
Instructions
- Peel the potatoes. Bring water to a boil over high heat in a medium saucepan and add the potatoes. Boil them for about 30 minutes, until they are tender when a fork is inserted. Drain the potatoes and let them cool.
- On a large cutting board or work surface, dice the cooked potatoes until the pieces are very small.
- Add the flour, nutritional yeast, olive oil, and salt to the potatoes.
- Combine the mixture with your hands and knead until the mixture forms a dough. Keep kneading the dough, flipping it over and turning it for about 15 minutes, until all the lumps are removed.
- Add a handful of flour to the work surface. Divide the dough into four sections.
- Using both hands, roll each section into a long, cord-size piece about 16 inches long. Cut the cords into ½-inch pieces.
- Roll the ½-inch pieces between your hands and gently place them on the wood pasta board. Make a slight indentation with your thumb and roll them gently into a gnocchi shape using the grooved wooden pasta board or the tines of a fork. Repeat with the other sections of dough.
- Bring a large pot of water to a boil over high heat. Carefully add the gnocchi and boil for just a few minutes, until they float to the top of the water.
- Drain the gnocchi in a colander. Transfer them to a serving plate and drizzle them with olive oil.
- Pour the tomato sauce over the gnocchi and sprinkle with Macadamia Parmesan.
- Garnish with basil and pepper.
Notes
Simply Red Tomato Sauce
Ingredients
- 7 garden tomatoes on the vine
- 3 garlic cloves peeled and minced
- ½ cup chopped onion
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 teaspoon Celtic sea salt
- ½ teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper
Instructions
- In a deep saucepan, bring 6 cups of water to a boil over high heat and add the tomatoes. Boil for 5 minutes, or until the skin begins to peel off.
- In the pitcher of a Vitamix or high-speed blender, place the tomatoes, garlic, and onion. Blend on medium speed for 30 seconds. Then add water in 2-tablespoon increments and blend again to reach the desired consistency.
- Pour the blended sauce into a saucepan over medium-low heat and add the olive oil. Heat until warm, about 5 minutes. Add the salt and pepper and adjust to taste.
Notes
Macadamia Parmesan
Ingredients
- 2 cups raw macadamia nuts
- 1 tablespoon chickpea miso paste or light yellow miso
- 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
- 1 teaspoon Celtic sea salt
- 1 capsule acidophilus (3-billion-active-culture strain)
- 1 tablespoon refined coconut oil, plus more for greasing the mold
Instructions
- Place the macadamia nuts in the bowl of a food processor and pulse until mealy.
- Add the miso and pulse for 15 seconds.
- Add the nutritional yeast, salt, and acidophilus and pulse for 15 seconds.
- Add the coconut oil and process.
- Grease a 6 x 31/2 x 2-inch rectangular mold with coconut oil or line with plastic wrap.
- Press the mixture firmly into the mold, cover with parchment paper, and refrigerate for 24 to 48 hours.
- Turn the cheese out of the mold and place it on a cutting board. Cut with a very sharp knife or crumble. This cheese will keep for about 2 weeks covered and refrigerated.
Notes
Other pasta recipes you might enjoy include:
Jenny
Angel hair pasta with marinara and meatless meatballs! If I win the cookbook I'll be able to get a bit fancier : )
Michelle
I have never seen an all Italian Vegan cookbook! This is so exciting! My go to Italian vegan meal is tempeh sausage crumbles from Isa Chandra Moskowitz. I use it in sauces and in lasagna it's soo good.
Susan
Vegan lasagna is my favorite Italian food.
Melissa K.
My favorite vegan italian food is whole grain pasta with vegan pesto and vegetables! YUM!
jacquie
whole grain pasta with a simple tomato and sage sauce
Karen D
I make a vegan lasagna using cashew cream and zucchini noodles. Not authentic, but delicious!
Cassandra D
Basil Pesto Zucchini Pasta.
Jess
I am very exciting to make the GF gnocchi! While I am not GF, family members are so I am always cooking GF! Thank you for the share and chance to win!