Gnocchi agli spinaci (Spinach Gnocchi)
For most of us we are still spending most of our time at home, with grey weather all around. Let’s add some color! And if that happens to come in the form of pasta, even better!
Making pasta seems daunting but I promise you, it doesn’t have to be!
3 Ingredients. Start to finish— 1 hour. You can do it!
Gnocchi agli spinaci for 4 people
Ingredients:
3 eggs
150 grams fresh spinach
400 grams flour, 00
Procedure:
Take your spinach and cook it in a pan, adding nothing else. Make sure it is on low heat, stirring frequently. The spinach will start to wilt, cover it for a few minutes until all completely wilted.
Once it decreases in volume and is cooked remove it from the pan and press it in between a clean kitchen towel or between paper towels and wring as much of the water out as you can. Roughly cut or chop your spinach (this is optional, but I find starting from smaller pieces is helpful).
Take a blender or a food processor and add roughly half of your flour (it doesn’t need to be precise) and all of the spinach. Start to pulse it until the spinach and flour come together and the flour starts to take on a green hue.
In the blender or in a bowl and the rest of the flour to the flour/spinach mixture and mix together well, making sure there are no large pieces of spinach.
Now, empty the flour mixture onto a wooden surface, forming it into a mountain. With a utensil or you fingers make a well in the center.
Crack the eggs into the center well. With a fork start to slowly beat the eggs.
Once beaten, start to slowly combine the flour from the outer edges into the well to combine with the eggs.
Now the fun starts! Get your hands in there and start to mix and knead everything together until well combined and you get a consistent dough.
Form the dough into a ball, cover it with plastic wrap and let it rest on your table for 30 minutes.
Once rested, take a knife and cut a 1-inch slice off. Cover the remaining dough with the plastic wrap.
Take the slice of dough and roll it between the palms of your hands. Once long enough place it on your wooden surface and roll it with your fingertips into a long rope about the width of your finger.
Cut into 1/2-inch pieces. To get the classic gnocchi lines you can now roll the pieces with the back of a fork, but I like to keep it simple.
Repeat with slices from the remaining dough until finished.
Put the gnocchi into a bowl coating and mixing with some flour so that they don’t stick together,.
They are ready to cook or you can cover and store in your fridge until ready to cook.
That wasn’t so hard now was it? If you want to get extra creative, you can also save half the dough and roll it out to make tagliatelle. One dough, 2 types of pasta.
Let me know what you think in the comments below!