Ricotta Gnocchi

Welcome to our weekly Foodie Friday link up! I’m linking up with Annmarie from the Fit Foodie Mama + Esther from Chocolate Runner Girl to create awesome healthy recipes each week! This week’s theme is Reach Recipe (aka something you’ve always wanted to make but never did because it seemed too difficult/time-consuming/etc.)!

Once upon a time, my friend and I decided to try our hand at making our own gnocchi. Quite unfortunately for us, we grossly underestimated and kept adding and adding until, before we knew it, we had 7 lbs of gnocchi.

Let’s just say that we were eating gnocchi for a long, long while, and I have not made it again…until now!

As part of our program’s hope to promote residency wellness, we get 1.5 retreats per year where the 15 of us are all off work at the same time so we can do some kind of group activity. For our winter retreat this year, we decided to do a cooking class!

We have one resident who’s vegan and a couple other who were doing a vegan/vegetarian challenge, so we opted for a no-meat cooking class and came across a pasta-making class at a local downtown restaurant.

They taught us about different kinds of pastas and provided us with all the ingredients along with instructions, a demonstration, and tips on how to adjust our recipes in the future to our own liking (e.g. putting in different fresh herbs), and also provided alternative recipes for our vegan resident and our cheese-averse resident!

After we finished, we were given takeaway containers and bags to keep our new creations before heading back upstairs to have lunch! (I want a gnocchi/cavatelli board!)

Yay for appetizers! :]

Homemade Ricotta Gnocchi

Print Recipe

Ricotta Gnocchi

Ever wanted to try to make your own pasta but found it somewhat intimidating? We learned how to make this light, fluffy gnocchi from a chef at a restaurant in NJ - no potatoes needed!

Prep Time20 minutes mins

Cook Time20 minutes mins

Course: Main Course

Cuisine: Italian

Keyword: vegetarian

Servings: 6 servings

Ingredients

• 2 cups ricotta cheese
• 2 cups parmesan cheese
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg freshly grated
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• sea salt to taste
• freshly ground black pepper to taste
• parsley optional

Instructions

• Add cheeses + flour together into a large bowl and mix thoroughly. Then add nutmeg with a splash of water to bind the mixture. Season with salt + pepper.
• Add parsley and mix everything together.
• If the mixture is too wet, add a little more flour. If it's too dry, add a little more water.*
• Roll into logs and cut into 2-3cm pieces with a blunt table knife.
• To shape the gnocchi, hold a fork on the table with one hand and place a gnocchi pillow onto the tines of the fork (or cavatelli board) and use your thumb to press in + down the length of the fork. This should cause your gnocchi to curl into a "C" shape, which will help it to catch sauce later on!
• Dust with flour as needed to prevent them from sticking to each other.
• Pop into the fridge for ~10 min to set.
• To cook (cooked gnocchi not pictured!), add the gnocchi in a pan of salted simmering water for about 2-3 minutes, or until they float to the top. Once cooked, use a slotted spoon to lift them out of the pan. Serve with sauce of choice.

Notes

• *You can test a small piece of dough by popping it in a pan of salted boiling water--if it falls apart, add a little more flour.
• This can be stored in the freezer for a couple months!

Lunch was served family-style and consisted of a salad appetizer and 3 pasta main courses! <3 Since a number of the courses had cheese in it, they brought out additional entrees for our non-cheese-eating residents too!

Aranci e Barbabietola – navel oranges, golden + red beets, pomegranate, arugula, ricotta salata, roasted cashews, burnt orange vinaigrette

Garganelli – quill-shaped pasta, roasted mushrooms, marsala ragu, spinach, shaved pecorino

Cappelletti – truffle ricotta-stuffed pasta hats, butternut squash puree, melted butter

Gnocchi – ricotta dumplings, passata di pomodoro, baby spinach, chili

This is probably my favorite retreat we’ve had thus far! I’ve never done a cooking class before but have always wanted to–we had a bunch of fun making our own gnocchi and the food they served was absolutely delicious! :] (I totally thought we were just going to eat what we made at first, haha.)

End-of-Week-ish Recap!

• Do you know someone who’s been breaking down gender stereotypes/barriers? Learn more about the #StrengthHasNoGender™ campaign + find out more about my own story!

• Have you ever tried making your own pasta?
• Have you ever taken a cooking class?
• What’s a “reach recipe” for you?

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