Though spinach gnudi — delicate, pillowy cheese dumplings fried in browned butter and sage — are historically extra of a spring or summer season meals, I’m right here to make the argument we should always eat them proper now, in prime soup-and-sweater climate. As a result of did you hear the half about heat cheese? the puddle of brown butter? the earthy sage? It’s a symphony of scrumptious fall issues and in the event you inform me you don’t wish to curl up on the plate and take a nap in it, high-quality, I’ll imagine you however I do suppose you’re in denial.
Gnudi actually means “bare” in Italian — contemplate them spinach and ricotta ravioli with out the pasta wrapper. I feel they’re higher in each manner since you get the entire delicate, tacky filling, not one of the pasta fuss that may really feel leaden collectively. Sometimes, gnudi are made with contemporary greens which have been blanched and finely chopped however I’ve been on a mission over the past yr to provide frozen spinach (dependable! economical! seasonless!) extra love, particularly when all I’d deliberate to do with the contemporary stuff was cook dinner it down and really feel bereft when it vanished. Frozen spinach saves me this heartache, and right here we’re utilizing an entire field, saving us a math headache too.
From there, it’s only a few easy steps to make — combine with ricotta, parmesan, an egg, seasoning, and a sufficiently small quantity of flour that I wager a gluten-free flour would work as swap — type into balls, boil them briefly till they float like marbled inexperienced clouds, and brown them in a skillet with butter and sage. The result’s decadent and comfy and whereas I briefly thought of arguing that they’re not almost as heavy as you’d count on from, you realize, cheese fried in butter (they’re not!) I’ll say as a substitute that they’re the precisely appropriate stage, which is to say successfully warming and scrumptious however not sleep-inducing (you realize, except you cave on that nap provide).
Seeking to stretch it into extra of a meal? You may add hearty bread, a easy soup, or a roasted fall salad.
P.S. Don’t miss the recipe for toasted ricotta gnocchi with pistachio pesto in my third cookbook, Smitten Kitchen Keepers. They’re spinach-free and pan-fried solely and so they change into basically burnished cheese nuggets, then tossed with an arugula and pistachio sauce, brightening every thing.
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