Pumpkin gnocchi for lunch

 

It is pumpkin time again, and a large Turk's Turban was split and roasted on Wednesday in preparation for a big Mexican inspired soup when several friends from the WI came over for the book club.  Many of the pieces have been stored away in the freezer for future use, with some still in the fridge.  My sister asked if I knew of any pasta recipes and I set to to find some links for her.  This led to my making some pumpkin gnocchi for our lunch today.

To get to the base mix, I had to process the baked pumpkin.  I just have a small attachment to my hand held stick blender, but by diving up the mixture of around 300g baked pumpkin, it was possible.  The pumpkin baked up very firm by that I mean not at all watery, and the mixture was very dry, so I added two eggs.  Just around 200g of OO flour kneaded into the mixture gave just the right consistency.  The recipe I found on line was just a guide, and it didn't have salt, but I definitely would add salt next time, neither did it have any eggs, but since we were having this as a main course the extra protein was good.

We had half of these gnocchi for our lunch, and the other half are now being frozen down. Several of the recipes I looked up mentioned a dressing of butter and sage.  Here two pans are ready to start the cooking: the large frying pan of water was to boil the gnocchi, and the small one for preparing the butter and sage.

I treated myself and a friend to something from the Wells Food Festival just last week, and decided to try them for the first time.  I gently crushed the soft black salted Kampot pepper corns in a little olive oil and added a few fine strands of sage which I have gently heated in a little oi.  before melting the butter for the remainder of the gnocchi sauce.

At the same time as frying up the freshly picked sage from the garden I added in a good measure of roasted pumpkin seeds which I have ready to add to salads etc., and the whole was topped with some grated goat's cheese.

The dressing of sage and pepper infused olive oil was drizzled over the chopped tomatoes as a side salad and placed within the bowl....

Improvements for next time: salt the gnocchi and also the poaching liquid.

Use that dressing of sage, olive oil and bruised Kampot pepper corns to dress fresh sliced tomatoes served with anything else, it was delicious!

Possible food pairings: pumpkin gnocchi poached in a sweeten sauce and topped with toasted pecan nuts and maple syrup, alongside a dollop of yogurt?  

Years ago on holiday in  Austria in a traditional hill side hotel, we were served a simple dessert of dumplings with a vanilla sauce which was surprisingly good and obviously memorable..it was dressed with a scattering of toasted poppyseeds.