So, every week during lent on Friday I will be sharing a meatless meal with you all and I am inviting everyone to link up to a meatless recipe on their own blog.
The only rules are:
1. You must post a link to the actual recipe on your blog and not to your front page.
2. Please place a link in your blog post back here so everyone can find all of our recipes.
3. Only post one recipe per week.
Thats it!
Here is my recipe for this week.
When I was a young bride, Poppa and I would occasionally go out to eat on the weekends. His favorite dish was always gnocchi. To surprise him at home once in a while I would purchase gnocchi in the refigerator case and make but it never held a candle to the restaurant version. One day, inspired to make it myself, I spent 3 hours with an Italian cookbook only to come out with a mushy mess I was embarrased to show him…back to the refigerated stuff.
It was only a few years ago that I ran across an easy version with ricotta instead of potatoes in a doctors office magazine. I jotted down the recipe from the magazine and threw it in my binder. It was probably a whole year later that I was organizing all my recipes into a binder that I found that slip of paper and started playing around with it. After a few attempts, I made a gnocchi that was BETTER than the restaurant and so easy. In this recipe I add lemon zest but you could leave it out if you like. I also love to add fresh minced tarragon instead. The other thing you can do is pan fry them in butter instead of boiling and they are yummy but Poppa likes them like this.
No Fuss Ricotta Gnocchi
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
1 cup whole milk ricotta cheese
1 large egg
1 tsp lemon zest (only the yellow part of the skin, use a microplaner)
1 tsp sea salt
grate the parmesan and lemon zest and put aside in a bowl
combine flour, ricotta, egg and salt,
with your hands, mix together the flour mixture
add the cheese and lemon zest until just incorporated, do not overmix
cut into three portions and roll each one out
cut into 2 inch pieces and meanwhile, put a large pot of salted water to boil on the pot while you work on the next steps
if you like the grooves you can do that by running the gnocchis over the back of a fork
one or I use the bottom side of my egg slicer. Its really just for the looks.
Transfer gnocchis to pot of boiling water and gently stir them in the water. When they float to the surface let them cook for another minute or two. Transfer to a strainer.
Toss with your favorite sauce and serve
If you have a meatless meal that you would like to share, just include the link at the bottom.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or follow me by email at the top right hand of the screen to have future posts sent to you. Tricia (Crunchy Catholic Momma)
