Gluten Free Pumpkin Gnocchi

Gluten Free Pumpkin Gnocchi 2/3 cup pumpkin puree (fresh or canned) 1/2 cup ricotta 1 1/4 cup Bob’s Red Mill 1-1 Gluten Free Flour 1/3 cup shredded parmesan 1 egg 1/2 tsp kosher salt Brown Butter with Sage 1 tsp oil 3 1/3 tbsp butter 20-25 leaves of fresh sage Measure 2/3 cup of pumpkin puree and place in cheesecloth. Squeeze out liquid until about 1/3 cup of puree remains. Add to your stand mixer along with ricotta and egg. Mix. Mixture will look grainy. Next, add the flour, parmesan, and salt, and mix until everything comes together in a soft dough. Tip dough out on to a lightly floured surface and slightly knead until it is smooth and all you can’t see any more clumps of ricotta. Divide into 8 equal pieces. Roll out each piece into a long snake until it is roughly the circumference of a dime. Slice into 1/2″ bits and press lightly with a fork on the freshly cut edge to create a ridged pattern. Do this with the remaining dough until everything has been cut and patterned. Bring a large pot of water to the boil and season with salt. Add gnocchi all at once into the pot and allow to cook until dough floats to the top. Stir gently once or twice at the start to make sure nothing is sticking to each other or the pot to prevent them from floating. Once they have come to the top, scoop out with a slotted spoon and place on a paper towel and/or sieve to drain. Cooking should take only 1-2 minutes. Heat oil and butter in a large pan until butter is completely melted. Bubbles should disappear and butter will begin to turn brown and smell nutty. Add in gnocchi and sage leaves. Cook in two or three batches to prevent overcrowding if necessary. Toss gnocchi occasionally to get both sides cooked. Once they crisp up on the outside and turn golden brown, they’re cooked and ready to be plated. Top with shredded parmesan and season with salt and pepper.

What’s everyone been up to this Fall? Eating well, I hope. There’s still time to whip up some pumpkin goodness this season, and I think today is a great day to do it. There are leaves on the ground (so many leaves…) and it’s just chilly and rainy enough outside to have an excuse to stay in and snuggle. This gnocchi is a perfect earthy comfort food to put on the table tonight, so let me show you how.

I felt very weird not starting the instructions for this recipe with “Preheat the oven”. While savory foods aren’t my typical go-to, I could still tackle this one with a fair amount of skill since I still got to mix flour and eggs in my kitchenaid.

The first time I saw gnocchi was on Masterchef Australia, and they called the dough “pillows”. How can you not want to eat something with such a cute nickname? But, I didn’t expect I’d ever get the chance. It’s a pasta, and as you know, wheat and I are not friends. I’m comfortable enough to make desserts gluten free, but pasta felt a little out of my skill set. You know what though? I tried it. And the very first time I made it, it was amazing! I really thought these would be dense and tasteless and pretty much just a mess. I was so thrilled when the butter bubbled and turned nutty and the gnocchi went from soft to crisp and golden.

Ideally, you’ll have some cheesecloth laying around. Not a big deal if you don’t though. The idea is that you want to dry out some of the pumpkin puree so it isn’t so wet and soupy. With a cheesecloth, you can scoop the puree into the middle and squeeze out the liquid. You can accomplish the same thing with a couple paper towels, but you have to be much more gentle when squeezing so the paper towel doesn’t rip. Or, you can lay some paper towels out on a sieve and let the pumpkin sit in there for a bit and drip dry (hahaha oh man).

There isn’t an exact measurement of liquid I can tell you needs to come out, and that would be annoying to try to reach anyway, right? So you just have to eyeball it. You want the puree to be pretty tacky after some of the liquid is removed. In my testing, I always get about 1/3 cup puree left over.

You can toss out out the pumpkin juice (gross) and move the dried out puree to your mixing bowl. Add in the ricotta and egg and let it mix for a minute so it comes together. The ricotta won’t completely mix in, but that’s fine. We’re going to knead it in later. Right now it’s…really gross looking. Lumpy and smells like spaghetti-o’s.

Add in the flour, parmesan, and salt, and mix again. This time, the mixture will come together into a soft dough. Are there still ricotta lumps? Don’t worry, we’re getting to it.

Very lightly flour a large surface so we can begin shaping the dough into PILLOWS. When I say very lightly, I mean it. This dough needs to retain a bit of tackiness so it can grip the surface a little to be rolled out smoothly. Too much flour and it will just slide around. Want to know how I know? You know.

So, tip out the dough onto your floured surface and roll it up into a ball. By shaping it like this, you should be able to knock around whatever ricotta lumps were still poking through. If you can still spot some, just play with the dough a bit more and it should eventually come out smooth.

Divide up the dough into roughly 8 equal parts. Doing so will just make each piece easier to roll out into a long snake-like piece. I kind of just rolled until it felt right. If you have a dime handy, your snake should have about the same circumference as the dime (or 18mm in diameter for you nerds).

Now you want to slice the snake into equal pillows. I cut mine into about a 1/2 inch each. I was having trouble just doing it by eye, and since I apparently don’t own a ruler, I took a sheet of college-ruled paper and cut the length of two lines of space. There must be a name for this kind of ingenuity. Or is it just called being lazy…?

Once you have everything sliced, you can begin making the ridge pattern. While this is optional, the ridged like to hold things like yummy brown butter, and they look nice, so I recommend it. Holding your fork so the tines are flat against the dough, gently press down into the fresh cut edge of your gnocchi. This will squash the rectangle into more of a round shape. If the dough sticks to your fork, gently roll the dough off rather than trying to pull it off straight.

Have all of your gnocchi gathered together because when we go to put them in the pot, you want to try to get them all in at once. If you’re tossing in a handful at a time, they’re going to cook at different rates and you might get some under and overcooked gnocchi sneaking onto your plate.

Start a boil in a large pot and season the water with salt. When it has reach the boil, pour all of the gnocchi in and give them a gently stir so they don’t stick. It should only take a minute or two for them to cook. You’ll know they’re done when they float to the top of the water. Take a slated spoon and skim off whatever has come to the top and place them in a sieve lined with paper towels so they can drain off. Once they’re all out and drained, it’s time for the final cooking procedure.

Heat your oil and butter in a saucepan on the stove. The butter will first melt, then bubble, then it will become suspiciously still. When it settles down like this, it will start the browning process. Keep and eye on it and give it a stir here and there to keep it from burning. Once it has turned brown and you can smell a fragrant nuttiness, add in the gnocchi and sage. Please do not overcrowd the pan! I kept trying to cook them all at once, but it takes forever and they won’t cook evenly, so just do the cooking in a couple batches if you need to and give those poor little guys some room.

Stir and toss them around as they cook so they become completely coated in butter and both sides of the gnocchi get crispy and golden brown. This can take between 5-15 minutes depending on your heat and how full the pan is. Remember, you already boiled them, so you aren’t having to cook them all the way through. This is just to get them flavorful and crispy.

Don’t forget to season these once they’re done. I only keep unsalted butter in my house because I mainly use it for baking, so be sure to salt your gnocchi before serving if your butter is unsalted!

These little pillows are so addicting. I couldn’t stop myself from snacking on them while I was trying to shoot them! It was really dangerous. I seriously had to skip dinner a couple times because I had already eaten a full serving of these. Good luck my friend.