Scott Conant | Joanne McAllister | New York City | restaurant chef/owner

Scott Conant's New Italian Cooking by Scott Conant with Joanne McAllister Smart
(Broadway, $35)
Like Batali, Scott Conant is a New York City restaurant chef/owner (L'Impero and Alto), so I turn to his recipe for Yukon Gold Potato Gnocchetti with trepidation. I needn't have worried. Conant may cook like an Italian, but he writes recipes like an American.

There's only one tricky part to making gnocchi, and that's knowing when to stop adding flour. Add too much and you'll have potato bricks; add too little and they'll dissolve when they hit the cooking water. Conant's is the only recipe that offers specific guidelines and proposes making test gnocchi. (My method for the others is to lob a few pieces of dough to Paolo, who claims to be able to recognize the right proportion by taste.)

I am not nearly as enamored of the egg Conant puts into his gnocchi, nor of the shrimp and peas overpowered by rosemary that he puts on top of them.

In the best of all worlds, I decide, Conant would write Hazan's recipes for him. Their collaborative gnocchi recipe would go something like this:

Ultimate Yukon Gold Gnocchi with Tomato Sauce
(loosely adapted from How to Cook Italian and New Italian Cooking)

Potato Gnocchi
Serves 4 to 6
2 pounds Yukon Gold potatoes (about 4 large potatoes)