Day 7 - Pumpkin and Potato Gnocchi

A really simple way to use vegetables we have in abundance from our stores at the moment, Pumpkin and Potato Gnocchi make a good low fat Sunday supper. The recipe is at the end of the post and makes enough for four so when I made these at the end of January I put half in the freezer for another meal. Today we ate them.



They were frozen spread out on trays until hard, then stored in a bag. Freezing them like this meant they don't stick together and you can take out just the amount you need. I made these with really big ridges to take a lot of sauce.



Cook them by adding them to boiling water, just enough at a time that the water continues to boil and there is room for them all to move around. When they rise to the surface use a strainer to remove them from the water. They can be cooked from frozen.



Arrange them in a lightly greased serving dish. Cover the boiled gnocchi with a sauce of your choice. The first time we had these we had them with a garlic and rosemary 'butter', tonight I used a tomato and pumpkin sauce that I had also tucked away in the freezer.



Top the sauce with pine nuts, or other nuts, seeds or breadcrumbs of your choice and bake in a hot oven (220C) for 20 minutes.

Serve with grated vegan cheese or nutritional yeast.

To make the basic gnocchi:

300g potatoes, cooked in their skins, peeled and put through a ricer.
300g mashed pumpkin, use butternut or a Crown type, halved and baked in the oven until soft.
160g plain flour, plus extra as needed.
Salt and pepper to taste.

Make sure your vegetables are not too wet. The pumpkin can be placed in a sieve for an hour or two to drain if necessary but should be o.k. if cooked by baking.

Mash the potato and pumpkin together, season then add the 160g flour and mix and knead until a soft paste that will hold its shape is formed. You might need a little more flour if your pumpkin is very wet but try not to use too much, just enough to bring the dough together and make a single ball from it.

Flour a board well - and several plates or boards to take each finished piece. Divide the dough into quarters and roll each piece into a 2 cm rope. Cut each rope into pieces 2cm long, mark with a fork and place, not touching anything else, on a floured board. You'll need to use flour to stop things sticking. As you mark the gnocchi they will flatten a bit under the fork, carefully lift them up and reshape to a cylinder, this will leave a slight hollow on the underside. That sounds dreadfully confusing but I hope you can see what I mean from the picture of the frozen gnocchi above.

When you've made them all they can be cooked by dropping into boiling water, or frozen as described above.

Can be served immediately after boiling if you don't have time to bake them. Needs a sauce of your choice, a simple tomato one works well but it can be as lightly or strongly flavoured with herbs, garlic etc. as you like.