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Delicious Pumpkin Gnocchi alla Romana

by Micaela Harrasser

This is a delicous, slighlty sweet twist on a classic that I crave every cold season: gnocchi alla romana (roman’s style) – which are made of flour (instead of potatoes), milk, egg yolks and butter – the consistency is much lighter, almost creamy, yet much richer and tastier than your usual gnocchi thanks to the fats in the butter and egg yolks. For this reason, they’re usually served without a sauce – they’re enough by themselves!

This version contains pumpkin, because I just can’t get enough of it and I have to eat it in every shape and dish while it lasts! Just when you thought you couldn’t make this dish any better, the pumpkin gives you this sweet surprise! 😀

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Delicious Pumpkin Gnocchi alla Romana

Serves: 6 Prep Time: Cooking Time: Nutrition facts: 200 calories 20 grams fat

Ingredients

  • 400g pumpkin flesh to bake
  • 1L milk semi skimmed
  • 2egg yolks
  • 250g semolina
  • Nutmeg, salt and pepper a generous pinch
  • 100g parmigiano/grana padano to grate
  • 40g butter

Instructions

  1. Dice the pumpkin, place on a baking tray, drizzle some oil and cook in a pre-heated oven (200C) until soft, about 30 min.
  2. Let the pumpkin cool until easy to touch, then transfer to a food processor.
  3. Blitz to a smooth paste, eventually by adding 200ml of the milk.
  4. On a big pot, start warming up the milk with the butter, the nutmeg, salt and pepper (a generous pinch of each).
  5. Right before it starts to boil, add the semolina and mix with a whisk to avoid forming clumps.
  6. Once everything is well mixed, switch the whisk with a wooden spoon and keep stirring on low heat for around 5 minutes.
  7. Remove from the heat, add the egg yolks one at time and incorporate well.
  8. Add the pumpkin puree, the spices and 80g of the cheese, mix well.
  9. Transfer the mixture to a big tray covered with baking paper, and spread it with the help of a spatula until you get a thickness of about 1cm. If the mixture is sticking to the spatula, wet the spatula.
  10. Let the mixture rest for 20-30 min until it gets at room temperature.
  11. When almost done, turn the oven on at 200C.
  12. Get a ring cutter (5cm diameter) and start cutting out the gnocchi.
  13. Transfer the circles to a baking tray (pre-buttered), placing them one slightly on top of the other (as shown in main picture above). Note, you can combine the leftovers of the gnocchi mix, re-spread them down to 1cm, and cut extra rings.
  14. Once the baking tray is filled, sprinkle evenly the remaining cheese on top together with some butter and place it in the pre-heated oven at 200C and cook for 25 min.
  15. Then turn the grill on and bake for 5 min or how long is needed to get that gorgeous crusty top. Enjoy!

Notes

You can cut the prep times extensively if you start with pre-cooked (and cooled) pumpkin. You would just have to make the gnocchi base and the pumpkin paste, then assemble the dish. Storage: If you used fresh ingredients, you can freeze the gnocchi before cooking them. Make sure to fully defrost them. Once cooked, you can keep them in the fridge for up to 3 days in an air-tight container. If too creamy, next time serve them the next day.

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