By: Frederikke Legaard | Serves 2-4
I once spent a summer at a friend’s beautiful house on the Danish island of Langeland, which had the most incredible kitchen that inspired me to try to make homemade gnocchi for the first time. I’ve always thought that it was something that would take all day, but it was actually so easy – much easier than making pasta. And tastes absolutely heavenly. Freshly shelled peas are sadly out of season now, but the dish works really well with frozen peas, too.
Ingredients
Gnocchi
- 300g potatoes
- 1 tsp peppercorn
- 2 bay laurel leaves
- 2 egg yolks
- A bit of salt
- Some freshly ground pepper
- 180g wheat flour
- 10 cavolo nero stems
- 1 bundle of sage
- 2 garlic cloves
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- A bit of salt
- Some freshly ground pepper
- 150g fresh or frozen peas
- 50g parmesan
Procedure
Peel the potatoes and cook them in a pot of water with the peppercorn and bay laurel leaves for approximately 10 minutes until tender. Drain the water but save some of it. Place the potatoes on a plate and mash with a fork. Put away to cool down.
Using a bowl, mix the egg yolks into the mashed potatoes and season with salt and freshly ground pepper. Add 6 tablespoons of the potato water to the mixture and stir in the wheat flour. Shape the dough into 4 balls of equal size and roll each of the 4 balls into a roll (approximately 2cm dia.) on a chopping board. Cut the rolls into pieces of approximately 1cm and either shape these into small balls or leave as they are.
Bring a pot of water with salt and some oil to the boil. Cook the gnocchi in the water for approximately 3-4 minutes. They are done once they float to the surface of the water. Drain the water and put the gnocchi aside.
Remove the leaves from the cavolo nero and cut them into strips. Chop half of the sage and crush the garlic cloves. Add some olive oil to a pan at medium heat along with the crushed garlic and fry briefly without burning it. Add the chopped sage, salt, pepper, frozen peas, cavolo nero and gnocchi and turn in the pan. Grate generous amounts of parmesan on top before serving.
