An alternative for the classic gnocchi made with potatoes. You can give this as a starter or a main dish. This recipe is for 4 persons. It seems difficult, bu trust me it is veeeeery easy

What you need:

For the Gnocchi

• 400g fresh spinach
• 150g flour
• 400g ricotta (fumicato would be better, but the regular will also do fine)
• 35g parmesan cheese
• 1 egg yolk
• 40g potato flour
• Salt, pepper, nutmeg

For the sauce

• 1 tin of peeled tomatoes
• Handful basil leafs
• Olive oil
• 1 clove of garlic
• White wine (drizzle)
• ¼ chick stock cube
• Teaspoon sugar (or 1 carrot if you don’t want to use sugar)
• Sage ( 1little branch)
• Salt & pepper

Get started:

• Remove the leafstalk from the spinach

• Put a big pot of water to the boil with a teaspoon salt
• Throw the spinach leafs in the boiling water and cook for 3 minutes
• Drain and immediately refresh with cold water. Let the water drip out of the spinach  and cool down(press the spinach sometimes to remove water)
• When spinach is cooled down chop up the spinach (you can also do this with the food processor)
• Put the chopped up spinach in a bowl and add the ricotta, parmesan, regular and potato flour, salt, pepper and nutmeg. Mix all and start knead it like a dough for bread until the mix is soft

• Let the dough wrest while you make the tomato sauce
• Put a pot (doesn’t have to be a huge pot as you only use 1 tin of tomatoes) on the heat with a tablespoon of olive oil and a peeled glove of garlic
• Once you see that the garlic starts to sizzle, you add the tin of tomatoes, drizzle of wine, fill the tin of tomatoes until the middle with water and add to tomatoes. Add salt, pepper, stock cube and the basil.
• Let cook on medium heat for about 10 minutes
• Mix the tomato sauce and drain through a sieve (into another small pot)
• Put the pot with tomato sauce on very low heat and add a branch of sage in the pot (which you’ll remove right before serving). This doesn’t have to cook, it is just to add a bit of sage taste!

Now we continue with the gnocchi

• Cut the dough in 4 horizontal pieces
• Put some flour on your worktop and take one of the dough pieces
• Make a long sausage from the dough (or if you would have one of those old fashion machines to make croquettes  to make the sausages from the dough)

Manuel way

With the machine

• Cut the sausages in small pieces from 2 max 3 cm

• Put all the cut ‘Gnocchi’ on a tray
• Once the water starts boiling you throw the Gnocchi in the water one by one

• Once the gnocchi start floating you leave them 1 minute and drain them

To serve them you have 2 options

• You either put some tomato sauce on a plate  and put some gnocchi on top
• Or you put the gnocchi back in the pot and mix tomato sauce under them  and then serve on a plate

Enjoy!