This recipe comes out of Claudia Rodin’s wonderful book The Food of Italy. Felicity Cloake has also written a “How to make the perfect pumpkin gnocchi” column in the Guardian where she deep dives into several recipes and comes up with what she considers to be the perfect recipe, which is almost exactly the same as Claudia Rodin’s, except for the spices, which I have included.

You need a well flavoured pumpkin and one that is dry when cooked. I used a crown pumpkin. Felicity Cloake suggests that if the cooked pumpkin looks too wet you can gently cook it in a frying pan until it dries out.  I think its easier to peel the pumpkin after it is cooked, and you waste less too.

If you don’t have parmesan just use what cheese you have in the frig. Add it to taste and you may need a bit of extra salt if it is a mild cheese.

Would recommend using scales rather than guessing the amounts. Too much kneading and stirring will make the gnocchi tough and starchy. If you have the correct amounts at the start you can just mix enough to incorporate thus making the gnocchi a soft and pillowy vehicle for the melted sage butter.

This was enough for a main course for two and would do a first course for four.

Ingredients

700 gm pumpkin, seeded and cut into even sized pieces.

100 gm all purpose flour

30 gm grated parmesan

¼ tsp nutmeg

¼ tsp cinnamon

1 tsp salt

I egg yolk

50 gm butter

Sage leaves

Method

1. Put the pumpkin pieces into a roasting pan in a medium oven and bake until soft. You can do this ahead of time, or the day before to share the oven with something else and get ahead. I had 480 grams by the time it was cooked and peeled.
2. Peel the cooked pumpkin and place in a bowl. Mash with a fork and add the flour, spices and parmesan. Mix this up (I found clean hands easiest) then add the egg yolk. Don’t overmix or the gnocchi will become tough and startchy. Claudia uses a whole egg to 800 gm pumpkin, so keep the white and add a bit if the mixture doesn’t come together.
3. Roll into a fat sausage and cut into 8 pieces on a floured bench. Roll each eighth into thin sausages about 2cm wide. Cut each of these into 2 cm lengths. Place onto a floured tray as they are done.
4. Melt the butter in a heavy frying pan and add the sage leaves.
5.  Bring a pot of salted water to the boil and drop the in gnocchi in batches. After a minute or two they will bob to the surface. Scoop them out with a perforated spoon and put into the butter/sage mixture. Continue until they are all cooked. Toss them through the sage flavoured butter and serve with more parmesan at the table.