Sweet Potato & Wild Garlic Gnocchi in a Three Tomato Cream Cheese Sauce with Charred Sesame Oil & Ras El Hanout Courgettes
Courgettes are in season right now and if there’s still a few leaves of wild garlic around, try this dish!
A Fabulous way to use up any leftover sweet potato mash that are hidden in the fridge from yesterday’s roast dinner, and I do love using up leftovers, called in my house next day’s meal.
There are two ways of cooking the sweet potato, but whichever way you choose, the goal is to end up with a potato that is as dry as possible.
Potato too wet and the gnocchi will be too wet making it practically impossible to cook without turning into a soggy mess.
I like to cook my sweet potatoes in the microwave, which helps to keep them as dry as there going to get.
Once they’re cooked and soft right through to the middle, let them sit out on a counter for around 10 minutes (so they finish off cooking) and then slice them down the centre to open them out.
Let them get completely cold before using them to make the gnocchi.
And the sauce, well that’s as simple as it could ever be, and when it’s all finished, it’s a thick creamy sauce that is perfect to coat every part of the gnocchi, which is what it’s for!
This isn’t a complicated dish to make, but it does have specific steps.
Reading the whole of the instructions including the tip box is a good idea before getting on with it.
Go on, give it a go and enjoy your sweet life!
Mix them very gently into the creamy sauce until each one is coated.
What You Need
Sweet Potato & Wild Garlic Gnocchi
2 x Medium Sweet Potatoes
250g Plain Flour – Approx. – See Tip Box
Pinch of Salt
Wild Garlic Leaves – Approx. 5 Leaves
100g Parmesan - Grated
the dough should be soft but not sticky
Three Tomato Cream Cheese Sauce
200g Tub of Full Fat Cream Cheese – See Tip Box
200g Grated Parmesan
8-10 Baby Tomatoes – Cut into quarters
17-20 Sun Blushed Tomatoes – Chopped
1 Tin Chopped Tomatoes
3 Tbsp Olive Oil
2 Large Cloves of Garlic – Minced
2 Tsp Dijon Mustard
1 Tsp Celery Salt -
1 Large Onion – Finley Chopped
1 Tsp Honey – See Tip Box
1 Tsp Dried Oregano
1 Tsp of Dried Basil
S & P
Cut the gnocchi at an angle which gives more surface area which means more sauce.
Charred Sesame Oil & Ras El Hanout Courgettes
2 Large, firm Courgettes – Washed & Dried
2 Tbsp Sesame Oil
1 Tbsp Ras El Hanout
Wait until the gnocchi float to the top before removing from the water
How It’s Done
Sweet Potato & Wild Garlic Gnocchi
Wash and dry the wild garlic leaves.
Chop the wild garlic leaves until almost minced
Wash and dry the sweet potatoes.
If cooking the potatoes in the microwave, use a fork and prick deeply all over before cooking them.
If cooking them in the oven, do the same with a fork. Doing this gives them a fighting chance to be cooked all the way through.
Once the sweet potato is fully cold, scoop out all the flesh into a bowl and throw away the skin.
Add the chopped/minced wild garlic leaves, the parmesan and the salt.
Mix everything together and then dump in the flour.
Give it another mix, so that everything is really well combined.
this is when it starts to get fun.
If the dough is too wet start adding extra flour 1-2tbsp at a time until it reaches the right consistency – firm enough to hold its shape when a small piece is rolled into a ball.
Roll the dough into a large ball, cover with cling film and let it sit in the fridge for around 30 minutes.
While the dough is resting, make the sauce.
Chop the tomatoes into pieces so they distribute throughout the sauce giving it a rich flavour.
Sauce
Place the olive oil into a sided pot that has a lid and can go on the stove top to cook.
Add the chopped onion and on a low heat, let it sweat down until its transparent. This will take around 5 minutes. – See Tip Box
Once the onions are soft, add the minced garlic to the onions and let it sweat on a low heat for around 2 minutes.
Add the tinned tomatoes, the chopped baby tomatoes and the chopped sun blushed tomatoes.
Add to this the cream cheese, the honey, all the dried herbs, celery salt, the parmesan and the Dijon mustard.
Stir really well and leaving the pot on a low heat with the lid on, letting it simmer away for around 10 minutes, stir on a regular basis so that it doesn’t stick or burn in the bottom of the pot.
Turn the pot off the heat and start to shape the gnocchi
Lots of parmesan makes the sauce really rich
Shaping the gnocchi
Remove the gnocchi from the fridge, remove the cling film and cut the dough ball into four pieces.
Dusting the work surface with some flour, take one quarter of the dough and roll it into a long sausage around the same width as a £1 coin.
Use a sharp knife to cut the gnocchi sausage into slices at an angle, making them about ¼ inch long- See Tip Box
Lay the pieces onto a plate which has been dusted with some flour.
Repeat with the rest of the gnocchi sausages.
Once all the gnocchi has been cut up, start to shape them
Make sure that hands have enough flour on them so as to avoid the dough from sticking to fingers.
Take each slice of gnocchi, place an index finger one of the cut sides.
Press gently to make an indentation, so the slice looks like a small dipped disk.
Lay the gnocchi disks onto a flour dusted plate and leave out of the fridge (room temperature).
Start to reheat the sauce on a very low heat, making sure it doesn’t stick.
Bring a pot of water that has a good amount of salt in it, to a strong rolling boil. – See Tip Box
Once the water with salt is at a strong rolling boil, start to drop the gnocchi into the water, one piece at a time.
Drop about half into the water, and when they float to the top, scoop them out with a slotted spoon and very gently, place them in to the warmed sauce.
Cooking should only take around 2 minutes. – See Tip Box
Repeat with the remaining gnocchi until all of the gnocchi are into the sauce.
Keep the sauce on low heat and with a spatula, very gently, stir the gnocchi into the sauce so that they are completely covered in the sauce. – Don’t over stir or they will break up in the sauce.
The gnocchi is ready to serve at this point.
Serve in a bowl along with the charred courgettes on the side
Slicing the courgette just thick enough to be able to char on both sides
Sesame Oil & Ras El Hanout Charred Courgette
Trim the top and bottom of the clean and dry courgettes.
Using a sharp knife, slice the courgettes lengthways into long slices around the width of a £1
Place all the slices into a bowl
In a cup, mix together the sesame oil and the Ras El Hanout
Pour the mixture over the sliced courgettes and make sure that each slice is coated in the mixture
Set the bowl aside and let it sit out on a bench for at least 1 hour. - See Tip Box
When ready to serve, heat a large fringing pan up and lay slices of the courgette onto the hot pan.
Let the sit on the hot pan until one side is charred and has brown cooking marks, once this happens, turn each slice over and repeat so that charred marks are on this side too.
This should take 2-3 minutes on each side.
Once cooked, serve warm straight away, or serve cold.
Make sure all the seasoning and oil are coating each slice of courgette
Tip Box
Sweating the Onions – This is a technique that uses a low heat to soften the onion until its transparent.
Honey – Honey comes in many flavours so be careful and use a honey that is mild. I have been known lay my hands on heather honey, which is fabulous but, way too strong to use in cooking.
Cream Cheese – a) Using full fat cheese is my preference, the cream cheese with less fat is that it seems to leave the sauce with less body, more ‘liquidy’.
b) If no cream cheese around, there’s always the option of using double cream, again, using a single will leave the sauce with less body.
Flour – The recipe says 250g, but I know that I always use a lot more and that usually depends on how wet the potato is, which can sometimes depend on the way the potato is cooked.
Play it by eye and feel, the finished dough should be soft but firm enough to be able to roll into a long sausage without sticking to fingers (when fingers are dusted with a little flour)
Serve in a big bowl with the charred courgettes on the side.
Cutting the gnocchi – The gnocchi works best when there’s a lot of surface area which lets them soak up as much of the sauce as possible so, cutting the gnnochi at an angle gives each piece more surface area.
Rolling Boil – A rolling boil or string boil, is when the water is boiling so hard that you can see lots of bubbles rising from the bottom of the pan.
Cooking – a) Cooking the gnnochi in the boiling water should only take a couple of minutes if the water is at a hard rolling boil.
b) When the gnnochi are in the sauce, they should only be in there for another couple of minutes, just enough time to get them coated in the sauce.
Courgette – Letting the courgette sit out on a work bench will bring them up to room temperature, this will allow the oil mixture to be absorbed into the pores.
Use a finger dipped in flour to make a dip in the cut side of the gnocchi .
