Saturday: gnocchi primavera

There's a stand at the market that has various Italian cheeses, sausages, filled pastas, and gnocchi that look quite nice but somehow I rarely get stuff from. Yesterday I picked up some gnocchi in order to combine them with the eggplant from the box.

Cut a smallish eggplant into 1cm dice, salt it lightly and let drip for a bit. Prepare some spring onions by cleaning them and cutting them in half if they're big, then lightly brushing with olive oil and cooking under the broiler until they soften and take on some color; chop them coarsely. Cook the eggplant in olive oil with grated yellow carrot and a chopped garlic clove for 5-10 minutes, until the eggplant is about ready. While this is happening start cooking the gnocchi. To the eggplant add the chopped onions, a bit more minced garlic, and mixed fresh herbs (I used thyme, rosemary, parsley, and some unidentified member of the mint family from this week's box). Moisten with a bit of the pasta cooking water. Serve the vegetables over the gnocchi sprinkled with parmesan and drizzled with olive oil.

The gnocchi themselves were really good and this was definitely a very nice way of serving them.

This technically doesn't qualify as rule of five, but it almost works if you think of the herbs as one ingredient, and I made up the damn rule anyway. :-)