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Read on to learn how Chiles maximizes enjoyment of this comforting dish—and some tips for savoring it yourself.
1. Customize it to your preferences.
With gnocchi soup, there are no hard and fast rules. “Not everybody makes it the same; you can add your own twist to it,” Chiles says.
Though Chiles has yet to whip up a recipe herself—”I’ve wanted to make it, I just haven’t had the time”—she’s watched her mom put it together plenty of times, and it’s never exactly the same as the batch before it. There are some constants, though: like the gnocchi, or as Chiles calls them, the “potato balls,” which her mom carefully crafts from scratch. The base stays the same too. Gina always adds chicken (either breasts or shredded pieces), a cream base, carrots, and celery.
As for the rest of the ingredients, well, those tend to vary. “Sometimes she would put peas in it, sometimes she wouldn’t,” says Chiles. The seasonings differ too: Lots of times it’s just salt and pepper, while other times it’ll be a sprinkle of paprika. And occasionally the soup will get a little something extra: “Sometimes she would put basil or mint or something just to give it a different type of taste.” You can do pretty much anything you want to your gnocchi soup, Chiles says—and it’ll still hit the spot.
2. Make it part of a multicourse meal.
On its own, a bowl of gnocchi soup, tasty as it is, usually doesn’t constitute a complete meal for the Nike-sponsored athlete. Instead, Chiles often savors it as one part of a broader spread.
When she’s at Olive Garden she’ll sip the soup alongside breadsticks, salad, and a Shirley Temple or Sprite. And if she’s eating her mom’s made-from-scratch version, she’ll typically have it as part of a full-course meal complete with appetizers (think: crackers and cheese), a Caesar salad, garlic bread, fruit with whipped cream for dessert, and juice to wash it all down.
3. Be prepared for deep conversation.
Chiles isn’t sure why this happens, but every time after she eats gnocchi soup, she tends to find herself engaged in heart-to-hearts with her parents, who are her typical meal companions for the dish.
Compared to other foods, “I’m pretty sure I’ve really only had deep conversations when I have the soup,” she says. “It gives me the ability to go deep down…the soup for me is like a psychologist.”
These chats can revolve around things Chiles is struggling with mentally in her life, like relationship problems or friendship issues. “But a lot of the time, typically, it’s about how I’m feeling about the gym or [if] I’m getting frustrated about something that happened at practice,” she says.
Being able to open up over a bowl of comforting soup yields a similar sensation as nailing a new skill in the gym or finishing a competition, Chiles says—it comes with that same feeling of relief, satisfaction, and even accomplishment.
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