Although the Tuscans make a spinach and ricotta dumpling which they call gnocchi verdi, traditionally gnocchi are made from potatoes. Mashed potato and flour are mixed together to make a paste hard enough to roll out like dough. The problem is this: the more flour you add the easier it is to make the gnocchi and the more like hard little bullets they will be. Less flour makes the gnocchi far more palatable. The secret is in cooking the potatoes. The less moisture there is in the final mash, the less flour will be needed. Waxy, Italian potatoes work best of all, but any waxy potato steamed, rather than boiled, will produce good gnocchi. Microwaving the potatoes works well, too. Try not to let the potato to flour ratio go below 4/1. Roughly half a pound of plain flour, but no more, to two pounds of potatoes.
You can add a little butter and one egg per pound of potatoes, but if you have a runny mix it will make things worse. Salt the paste to taste. Roll out some of the paste on a board until you have a snake about the thickness of a finger. Cut this into roughly inch-long pieces. Give each piece a squeeze in the middle to make it curl slightly. Cook the gnocchi by dropping them one at a time into salted, boiling water. They will float to the top when they're cooked. As they cook, take them out of the pan and put them into a pre-heated oven dish with a little butter.

Gnocchi in bianco.

About as simple as you can get. Stir butter into the gnocchi and then grate on fresh parmesan. And that's it. This combination of butter and parmesan works equally well with pasta. Many children prefer this dish to all others.

Gnocchi alla Zia Rosa

My Aunt Rosa has gnocchi down to fine art. I've never tasted better than hers. She is a traditionalist in this; she believes that gnocchi work best with a strong sugo, that is a well boiled-down tomato sauce in which there is either streaky bacon (pancetta) or sausage.