Beetroot gnocchi balls

I am trying to be more imaginative with the way that I use my crops. The idea is that they form part of the main dish rather than a side. Today I made filled beetroot gnocchi.

Ingredients

For the gnocchi

125g cooked beetroot

150g mashed potato

242g of plain flour

Pinch of salt

For the filling

250g ricotta cheese

Lemon zest

Salt and black pepper

Method

1. Blend the beetroot until it is smooth using a hand held blender

2. Add the flour, and then the mash potato and salt.

3. Form a dough and knead it until it is smooth.

4. In a separate bowl put the ricotta cheese, lemon zest and salt and black pepper and mix well.

5. Roll out the beetroot dough on a lightly floured surface

6. Cut out small circles of dough and place some ricotta into the middle.  Overlap and seal the edges. I made mine quite big.

7. Roll into a ball. Repeat this process.

There are then 2 ways to cook them

A

8. Bring a large pan of water to the boil and pop in some of the the gnocchi.

9. Cook for about 5 minutes until it floats to the surface and remove from the pan and drain.

10. Repeat until they are all cooked.

11. Serve with a tomato sauce, or saute in a herb infused butter. Sprinkle with parmesan before serving.

B

8. Chop some sage, and in the microwave melt butter and infuse the sage.

9. Roll the balls in the sage butter and air fry for about 15 minutes on 180⁰C, turning half way through.

We did the second method and the texture was like bread. I really liked them. We will definitely make these again. I think they will even be nice without the filling. If you don’t grow beetroot, those vacuum packed ones could be used. Next time I am going to serve these with a ragu sauce instead of meat balls, and see if they are as nice.