Number Eleven: Gnocchi with Pancetta and Spinach

This recipe doesn't come from one of Nigella's books. It actually comes from the Australian version of Delicious magazine - Nigella has a page or two in each edition, and this recipe comes from the May 2012 Italian Special! For some reason, Australian cooking magazines always seem so much more exciting than British ones - I guess they're using different flavours and ingredients which makes for a bit of a change.

The recipe I'm giving you is the one printed in the magazine (give or take a few words) which serves 2, however we doubled it to serve 3 with some left over.

The recipe also says to fry a bruised garlic clove in oil to flavour it - however if you have garlic oil already, then just use that instead of the olive oil, and leave out the garlic clove.


Ingredients

2 tsp olive oil
1 garlic clove, bruised
70g pancetta, cut into 1cm cubes (we could only find rashers and so couldn't cube it, but these work fine too when cut into strips.)
200g baby spinach leaves
2 tbsp dry white vermouth or white wine
good grating fresh nutmeg
2 tbsp thickened cream (we ended up using single but I think double would work better)
2 tbsp shaved/grated parmesan
400g fresh potato gnocchi


Method

1. Warm the oil in a frying pan over a medium heat. Add the bruised garlic and cook, stirring, for about 30 seconds or so, or enough to flavour the oil. Discard the garlic. Also put some salted water on the boil ready for the gnocchi later.

2. Add the pancetta and cook, stirring, until nice and crispy. In the recipe it says this should take 2 - 3 minutes, but for us it was more like 5 - 6.

3. Add half the spinach leaves to the pan with the vermouth or wine. It looks like a lot of spinach but don't worry! It will wilt down. Just stir it around a bit until it does.

Told you it would!

4. Add the rest of the spinach and allow to wilt. As you can see from the picture above, we found that there was far too much liquid, so we drained some off. Do this if you need to as well.

5. Grind in some black pepper and grate over the nutmeg. Then, stir in the cream and the parmesan. Meanwhile, add the gnocchi to the boiling salted water and cook until they rise to the surface.

6. Once the cream is bubbling and the cheese has melted, remove from the heat and season to taste.

7. Drain the gnocchi, then add to the sauce in its pan and gently mix.

8. Finally, divide between 2 bowls or plates and serve immediately!

Yum yum yum!!!