Nettle Gnocchi

When I was a child in Italy my Mum, sister and I will gather in the kitchen to make potato gnocchi. I was usually in charge of making the Bolognese sauce.

For this recipe I used a simple tomato sauce to accompany the gnocchi.

INGREDIENTS

For the nettle gnocchi:

200 gr potatoes

100 gr nettle

100 gr flour

1 egg

salt

For the tomato sauce:

200 ml tomato passata

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 wild garlic leaves (or 1 garlic clove)

salt

METHOD

Boil the potatoes until tender and mash them using a potato masher or ricer, sprinkle with salt then leave to cool.

Blanch the nettles for 3 minutes – you can either add them in the last minutes of the potatoes’ cooking time or boil separately, then use the nettle water to make nettle tea. Blitz the nettles into a paste.

Pour the flour onto a clean surface, make a well in the middle then add the potatoes, nettles and egg. You should get a compact dough that you can then divide into small sections; roll each section into 3 cm thick cylinders, then cut each cylinder into 3×4 cm pieces.

Get some salted water to the boil, then dip about 7-8 gnocchi each time; they are cooked when they rise to the surface (about 2-3 minutes).

This recipe makes about 30 gnocchi and the serving size is 10 gnocchi each.

For the tomato sauce, warm the chopped wild garlic into olive oil for 1 minute, then add the tomato passata and a pinch of salt. Cook on a low to medium heat for 5-10 minutes (the time it takes to cook all the gnocchi).

Pour the cooked gnocchi in the sauce and serve.

 

Ps: talking of potato dumplings – for more dumplings inspiration I recommend Barbara Gallani’s book Dumplings, read more about it in my article.