Saturday: Spinach-ricotta Gnocchi

This was basically a recipe from Using the Plot by Paul Merrett, which I have from the library. The original recipe is for dumplings, but Paul suggests an alternative use as gnocchi. Since there is a ton of spinach in the fridge and these sounded appealing, I gave them a try.

I did more or less a half recipe (only more or less since I didn't halve the egg yolk), so 125g ricotta, 250g spinach (blanched, shocked, and chopped into 2cm pieces), 65g flour, one egg yolk, parmesan. Preparation: beat the egg and ricotta together in a double boiler until they are warm and it's looking like the egg is ready to set. Stir in the grated parmesan. Stir in the flour. Stir in the spinach. Form dumplings with floured hands. Cook in boiling salted water.

I ate the dumplings with olive oil in which I had gently warmed a crushed clove of garlic and a piri piri chilli.

The flavor of these was good, but they were pretty raggedy looking. I think next time the spinach needs to be chopped more finely and mixed into the ricotta mixture before the flour. A bit of nutmeg also wouldn't hurt things.