Serves 4-6
Prep time 40min
Cooking time 30min
Skill easy
Ingredients
600g cooked pumpkin (1kg approx raw)
300g flour
1 medium egg
1 tsp salt
Freshly ground pepper
Generous grating of nutmeg
Sage butter sauce
100g butter
10 sage leaves
½ cup freshly grated parmesan cheese, plus extra for serving
Method
Ideally you want a pumpkin that is dry. However, I used a crown pumpkin and roasted it for longer to dry it out.
Preheat the oven to 170°C (not fan assisted).
Cut the peeled, deseeded pumpkin into even-sized thin pieces. Place on to a baking-paper-lined oven tray, season lightly and bake for 20 minutes or until the pumpkin is tender and has dried out.
Place the flour on to your workbench, make a well in the middle.
When the pumpkin is cooked, using a potato ricer, mouli or something similar, mash the warm pumpkin directly on to your flour.
Season with the salt, pepper and nutmeg.
Lightly beat the egg and add to the mixture.
Starting from the outside working inwards, bring the flour into the pumpkin mixture. I use a pastry scraper to do this.
Continue working like this and you will see the dough come together. Continue until the dough becomes a well-blended and pumpkin colour. You do not want to overwork the dough so try to do this quickly, but gently.
Divide the dough into 4 and roll each ball of dough into a long roll to the thickness of about 2.5cm in diameter.
Cut into about 2cm-thick sizes, place on to a lightly floured tray and keep separated.
Continue with remaining dough.
Bring a large pot of salted water to a rolling boil.
Add the gnocchi in batches and cook until it rises to the surface (3-4 minutes), drain and repeat.
If you are wanting to freeze it, cook it lightly as above and cool on a tray and freeze it on a tray. When frozen, pack into containers for later use.
To make the butter sauce, melt the butter gently. Remove from the heat, allow to settle and carefully pour off the butter, leaving behind the milky solids (discard those).
Return the butter to the saucepan and over a low heat, add the sage leaves and cook until the sage leaves go crispy and the butter takes on a wonderful nutty aroma.
To serve, add the gnocchi to a large bowl, pour over the sage butter and add the parmesan cheese, toss gently and add a tablespoon or two of the cooking water (this will form an emulsion with the butter to create a sauce).
Serve with more parmesan cheese, cracked pepper and enjoy.
