Gnocchi Virgin

When I went to France in 1993, I visited my friend m-ster (who I didn't know reads my blog but recently commented on my Santa wear) who was in Rome for the semester, excuse me he was in Sienna, but close enough, and they kept talking about gnocchi.  For some reason, I never tried it, but it sounded right up my alley.

It's surprising to me that I have never, ever had the occasion to order it in a restaurant or eat it at someone's house.  Until I made this gnocchi myself, I had never even seen it in real life.   I guess I forgot about it until I heard someone say it and then I'd forget about it again.

If you don't know what gnocchi is, it's a lot like ravioli.  And this recipe used ricotta and cheese and eggs and was basically the same ingredients I used for stuffed shells, just with flour to make the dough.

We have a Write to Know column in our newspaper, where people ask the weirdest things and I'm just as weird for reading it.  Recently, someone asked about the gnocchi recipe for a local restaurant.  Write to Know printed it and since I had the ingredients and realized it was much easier than I thought, I whipped some right up.

You are supposed to roll out the dough into "snakes" and cut them up, but I try to do as little rolling as possible because my counter space is limited.  I have a great marble rolling board that I can bring out, but it's heavy and I decided not to get it out.

Instead, I took small piece and rolled them and the cut them.  Some pictures of gnocchi have what are truly bite sized pieces, but these are bigger than that.  These are like 2 bite pieces. This recipe had little bits of spinach in it, thus the green.   I chop up spinach for my stuffed shells, too.

It amazes me how fast they cook and how "naked" they seem when they are cooked.  I served it with spaghetti sauce (I know someone out there is GASPING) because I'm redneck like that.  But, we didn't dump it on.  We put a little beside it.  Because we're classy like that.  I think I served it with bread, but I'm not sure.  Sometimes I get all carb crazy and serve bread with pasta, but only when I'm living on the edge.

I will make these again.  I probably should put the recipe, but that means I have to go into the kitchen to get it and type it up and.....