The first time, one always remembers. It’s indelibly branded on your brain, lying in wait for the slightest trigger to nudge it from sleep. As you know, I love spinach. It’s always around in my home especially now that I grow my own subsistence crop. Ricotta cheese makes its appearance on the shelves at Woolworths from time to time here in EL. When I see it, I’m immediately transported back to my very first taste of sage and burnt butter. That’s the small trigger that brought back the flood of delight as I recalled the most magical flavours of sage. In 2012 Sarah and I visited a special friend and their daughter in Berlin Germany. They made these amazing balls of spinach and Ricotta drizzled with sage butter. I could not believe I had never tasted this combination of flavours before. Our supermarkets have admittedly come a mile since then, but in 2012 in East London we were given the bare essentials whilst the gastronomic ingredients were kept for Cape Town and Johannesburg. Brian used to Travel with a cooler bag just so he could bring back Woolworths food before it opened here, that’s how starved we were of the novelty of quality prepared foods. Needless to say sage was never seen on our shelves.
Spinach and Ricotta Gnocchi
Ingredients
- 300g spinach net weight prepared from 900g raw spinach
- 2 spring onion chopped
- 1 garlic clove finely chopped or grated
- 1 egg
- 250g ricotta
- 50g almond flour
- 40g total mix of walnuts and pine nuts toasted and roughly chopped
- 45g grated parmesan
- 2 tsps preserved lemons finely chopped
- olive oil
sage sauce
- 20g sage
- 60g unsalted butter
- splash of olive oil
Instructions
- Oven 180°CBake for 20min Grill until golden about 3 min
- Gnocchi 1 egg250g ricotta 50g almond flour 300g net weight of prepared spinach, (see how to prepare spinach here) then add 2 spring onions finely chopped to this along with a large clove of grated garlic40g pine nuts and walnuts mixed toasted and chopped 45g grated fresh parmesan Salt and pepper 2 tsps preserved lemons chopped finely or zest and squeeze of half lemon
- Sauce 20g bag of sage 60g butter ( I used unsalted as it doesn't burn like salted butter) Splash of olive oil
- Mix all the gnocchi ingredients together in a bowl. Shape into balls about 30g each or slightly bigger than a tablespoon. Drizzle olive oil over base of baking pan (33X24cm). Place balls on pan. In a pan on stove melt the butter and add the leaves only to the melted butter. Spoon sage butter over each gnocchi ball and bake for 20min. Put grill on and continue to bake until golden. They will puff up slightly
- Serve over a steaming bowl of linguine and chopped fresh tomatoes and don't forget the Fresh parmesan too