Gnocchi with a simple sauce

I like gnocchi. They are similar to polish Kopytka, except you make them with less flour, cook them shorter, but they are still de-li-cious.
Man, I made some today and even though I ate a whole bowl, I could still eat more of those fluffy delicate clouds of potato mash.
Yes, potato mash. Made mashed potatoes yesterday? Great, set aside a bowl of the mashies, they're gonna make great gnocchi.
Look at them:

So, what do you need to know about gnocchi? They are not that hard to make, you can skip the fork mark, you can freeze some non cooked gnocchi, you can add fresh or dried herbs to the potato mix for extra taste,  you can add some frozen spinach for colour. I even added grated parmeggiano and butter, because I was making mashed potatoes the day earlier. I added eggs, which you can omit, but try them with eggs and without.
To tell the truth, this is poor food made fancy. But it's got everything I like in it, so I really don't care.

Let's get it cracking.

Type of dish: pasta, main
Cost: cheap
Difficulty: easy
Serves: 2
Time: 25 min
Preparation time: 15 min
Cooking time: 10 min


You'll need:
cutting board, fork, saucepan, frying pan, spoon, spatula, sharp knife, slotted spoon, plate for serving, medium mixing bowl,


Ingredients:
 For the sauce:

• 5 slices cured bacon or pancetta, diced or cubed
• 1 handful of cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1 small onion, diced
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/2 a small chili pepper, sliced, diced ( optional)
• 1 pinch dried basil /or 10 leaves fresh
• shaved parmesan cheese
• olive oil
• 1 tsp butter

For the gnocchi:

• around 300gram mashed potatoes
• 1 egg and 1 yolk
• 40 gr parmesan grated
• 1 pinch salt
• 2 tbsp butter
•  1/4 cup flour (have some extra for cutting)

 Heat up your frying pan on high heat, add some olive oil, when hot add the onion, garlic and chili and fry up until very fragrant ( your eyes might sting), add the bacon/pancetta,  after 2-3 minutes, add the tomatoes. At this point, lower the heat to medium, and stir avery now and then.
Heat up water in the saucepan on medium with a lid on. This won't take long, and neither will making the gnocchi.
In the mixing bowl, add together all the gnocchi ingredients,and mix with your hand until you have a small ball of not that sticky dough. It will be sticky, but fluffy- this means they'll be fluffy.
Tear the dough in 4 pieces, sift some flour on your working place, and gently roll out the dougn in long ropes but thick as your thumb. Sift more flour over them and using a fork, take off gnocchi sized pieces ( the length of a long fingernail? ) and press the tings of the fork over to make those fancy marks which are supposed to make the gnocchi hold sauce better.
When your water is boiling, add a tsp of salt, stir and using the slotted spoon, gently put in max 20 gnocchi at once. They will fall to the bottom of the pan, so stirr around so they don't stick together. They will emerge in a minute, so remove them then to a plate, or, in the sauce in the frying pan.
Cook how many you need, toss the ready ones with the sauce and serve with shavings of parmesan cheese and a sprinklung of fresh chopped basil for extra colour.
BEWARE: this is a spicy sauce, so remove the chili from the ingredients for the sauce if you can't stomache this.