Spinach and Ricotta Gnocchi with Sage and Butter Sauce

Welcome again to my recipe blog. I'll be without Internet the rest of August because I'll be working on a farm in McMinville, Oregon with the WWOOF program. However, I'll try to write about food every change I get. I'll leave you with one of the most time consuming foods I've ever made: Spinach and Ricotta Gnocchi. I hope I get to make homemade sheep's ricotta at the farm!

Good affordable dairy products, such as cheese and yogurt, are a hot commodity in Costa Rica. After making my first batch of yogurt, a friend of mine told me I could easily make ricotta cheese. So, one scorching day during a bus layover in San Isidro, I killed about two hours at an Internet cafe downloading how-to guides on making ricotta and recipes using ricotta. I came across this recipe from the blog Rachel Eats that is just wonderful. It's actually inspired from a recipe in The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. All of the photos in Rachel's blog are great and the recipes looks so delicious. Can I be Rachel's friend?

I thought it be really difficult to make gnocchi but it isn't; it's just time consuming. If you have plenty of spinach and about, oh, a half a day to spend in the kitchen, make this dish for or, better yet, with someone you really love. I made it with my host mother, Clemencia. We spent a good 30 minutes making all of the individual gnocchi by hand; you've been warned!

Spinach and Ricotta Gnocchi with sage and butter sauce
serves 4

For the gnocchi:

450g of very fresh, bouncy, lively spinach
salt
25g butter
1 tablespoon very finely chopped onion
150g Ricotta
50g plain flour
2 egg yolks gently beaten
115g freshly grated Parmesan cheese plus more for serving
a pinch of grated nutmeg
more plain flour for dusting

For the butter and sage sauce:

50g good quality butter
10 fresh sage leaves

Soak the spinach in several changes of water and discard any wilted or bruised leaves and trim away any very thick, woody stalks. Put the spinach in a large pan with nothing but the water that clings to the leaves, add a heaped teaspoon of salt, cover the pan and cook on a medium flame until the spinach has collapsed and is tender. This should take about 5 minutes depending on the freshness and age of the spinach.

Drain the spinach and once it is cool enough, squeeze and press it gently with your hands to eliminate as much water as possible. Chop the spinach roughly and set it aside.

Warm the butter in frying pan then add the onion and sauté it over a medium flame until it is soft, transparent and golden. Add the chopped spinach to the pan with a pinch of salt and then cook for about 5 minutes, stirring often.

Tip the spinach and onion mixture into a bowl and allow it to cool to room temperature.

Add the ricotta and the flour to the spinach mixture and stir gently but firmly with a wooden spoon. Next add the egg yolks, the grated parmesan and a tiny pinch of nutmeg. Keep stirring the ingredients until they are evenly mixed, taste, add salt if necessary, stir again. Let the mixture rest in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Dust your hands with flour and working quickly makes small nuggets/pellets of the mixture – about 2cm across (even smaller if you have the patience) and sit them on a tray dusted with flour.

Bring a large pan a well salted water to a gentle boil, not too hard or the gnocchi will disintegrate.

Drop in about 15 gnocchi at a time, when the water comes back to the boil, cook them for 3 – 4 minutes.

While the gnocchi are cooking make the sage butter…..

Put the butter in a small frying pan and turn the heat to medium. When the butter stops foaming and it starts turning tawny but not brown, add the sage leaves. Cook for a few seconds, turning the leaves once and then remove from the heat

Now back to the gnocchi, they will be puffy, soft and have floated to the surface. Using a with slotted spoon lift them out onto a warm serving plate and pour over some of the sage butter and keep warm in a cool oven. Drop in more gnocchi and repeat the process.

When all the gnocchi are cooked, pour over the rest of the sauce, turn them gently to coat with butter and serve at once with more freshly grated parmesan.