Autumn Recipes - Pumpkin Gnocchi

Pumpkin gnocchi are easy but time consuming to make, so it's a great excuse to get some friends together to speed things up! These ones are really tasty and especially delicious with anything sage flavoured or with a plain tomato sauce.

Working with pumpkin is a bit of a problem when it comes to recipes, as the amounts of ingredients needed vary depending on how much moisture is in the pumpkin. For this recipe we used quite a dry-fleshed Hubbard pumpkin, gutted and baked it, covered in foil, without water for about 1 hour (Oven 180 / gas 5). We then scraped out the flesh and pureed it. Even with that treatment, one pumpkin produced almost 1 litre of pumpkin juice when allowed to sit in a sieve for an hour, and it was still a bit wet when we started to use it! This means the recipe is a bit less exact than normal, but we encourage you to have a play and see what comes out!

Ingredients

Pureed pumpkin flesh, with as little moisture as possible

Grated extra mature or parmesan cheese

Plain or self-raising flour

Eggs

Method

Add 1 egg for every 1/2 pint  / 280ml of pumpkin and whisk
(We had 1 1/2 pints)

Add finely grated cheese to taste (we used 250g for this)
Then start to add flour.

Keep adding flour until you need to use your hands to kneed
the mixture lightly. Do the minimum work to get it firm
enough to make into discs about 4cm in diameter (use lots
of flour on your hands to avoid overworking the mixture).

The mix is right when the gnocchi can hold the indentation
of the prongs of a fork.

Gnocchi ready to cook. The traditional shape comes from
squeezing in the sides of the circle.

Boil the gnocchi in batches. If made with plain flour, they
will be done as soon as they rise to the surface of the water.
If using self-raising flour, they rise sooner, so let them cook
for a few minutes after that, or they may be under-done.

Best enjoyed with a sage-flavoured sauce & good company.
We ate ours with flash-fried sage, tomato sauce & extra cheese.