Pumpkin Gnocchi 

Serving Size: 4-5 people

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cooking Time: 15 minutes

Today it was extremely cold, gloomy, and rainy in Cleveland.  Naturally, I was craving carbs and something fall-ish. I really enjoyed making this gnocchi because it was so simple.  Just flour, egg, and pumpkin!  The fact that this recipe was so simple made me feel so much less guilty about the carb consumption; because usually store bough gnocchi contains various ingredients (half of which are unrecognizable or impossible to pronounce) as well as preservatives.  

It was a bit tricky because the dough is very sticky (that rhymes haha) so make sure you have plenty of flour to help keep it from clinging to your fingers because once you start to touch it, it loses its firm dough texture and will stick to anything. I used the same organic pumpkin that I used in my pumpkin pancake recipe (from Trader Joe's). I'm sure you could substitute whole wheat flour in the recipe if you wanted to make it a bit healthier, but all I had was white flour.  

Ingredients:

1 cup of mashed pumpkin or pumpkin puree 

1 egg

1 1/2 cups of flour

Cooking instructions:

1. Mix the flour, egg, and pumpkin in a bowl and start to kneed the dough.

2. Once you have a doughy texture, roll the dough into a few 1" thick rows.

3. Slice the rows into little squares, should be about 1" x 1". I used a pizza cutter, but you could use any type of knife for cutting.

4. Boil the desired amount of gnocchi until they float to the top of the boiling water.

5. You can put the leftover Gnocchi in the freezer on a sheet of wax paper, once the gnocchi is frozen you can place them all in a zip lock back for more convenient storing. 

Pumpkin Gnocchi with Peas, Creamy Garlic Sauce, Balsamic, and Feta.
Ingredients for garlic cream sauce:
1/2 cup of milk
1/2 stick of butter
3 teaspoons of flour
2 or 3 garlic cloves
Balsamic glaze
3 tablespoons of crumbled feta cheese

Instructions:
1. Pour milk, minced garlic cloves, and butter in a small pot on low heat.
2. Once the butter melts, reduce the heat to simmer.
3. Add pinches of flour to the mix in order to thicken it up, it should be done after about 15 minutes of simmering. You should see it bubbling a little bit, be sure to keep your eye on the sauce while it simmers because milk tends to burn easily.
4. Prepare the peas while the sauce is simmering.
5. Glaze a plate with balsamic glaze.
6. Place the gnocchi on the plate.
7. Pour the peas and garlic sauce onto the gnocchi.
8. Top with feta and you are all done!