Cooking with gnocchi frustrates me - for most of my life, I could only ever use gnocchi if and only if I made it myself (kind of like the same gripe I have with make carbonara from dried pasta). And, of course, Gnocchi is such a pain to make, I don't ever want to bother with it.
Trader Joe's saved me quite recently though - now that they have one open at Town & Country, I've spent hours perusing through the aisles and shelves, and have found the perfect packaged gnocchi. It's imported from Italy, fresh, vacuum sealed, not doughy or chewy, and overall, just made quite well! On a funnier note, that one day I stopped at TJ's to buy a bottle of rum, I forgot my ID, got carded, and was refused the purchase. Well, if I were them, I would card me too.
Anyway, I decided that since I seldom make my own pasta anyway, why should gnocchi have a different standard anyway? So, I caved into buying one (two actually) of those TJ gnocchi packs.
I had some Cambazola (a triple cream blue cheese) in the fridge, and wanted to use it in the sauce, but thought that a blue cheese gnocchi would just be too boring. After all, they sell the same stuff in the frozen section at TJ's already! The perfect winter sauce for me is always a brown butter, and I didn't get to make any brown butter pastas this fall, so I thought it would be a perfect incorporation into this dish! And, you can't have brown butter without having sage - it's a classic pairing!
In the end, the sauce was a simple bechamel, laced with sage brown butter, and then spiced with cambazola for a the final kick! I stuck the whole gratin in the oven till the sauce started bubbling and the top got all crusty, and there we had the perfect winter side dish!
Here's the recipe:
Gnocchi Au Gratin with Sage Brown Butter & Blue Cheese
Serves 4
20 ea Sage leaves
8 Tbs Butter
4 cloves Garlic, Minced
1 Lb Spinach
2 Tbs Flour
2 cups Milk
1 tsp Nutmeg, ground
0.5 cup Creamy blue cheese, like cambazola or gorgonzola
0.5 cup Bread crumbs
2 Tbs Oil
Salt to Taste
4 Servings Gnocchi, cooked
1 Melt the butter in a small sauce pan, until bubbling and just turning brown
2 Add the sage leaves and fry until crispy, remove with a slotted spoon and blot on paper towels. Salt
3 Remove 2 tablespoons of browned butter into a saucepan, and throw in the garlic and spinach
4 Saute until spinach cooks down and then remove from heat to reserve
5 Add the flour to the remaining browned butter and cook over low heat, whisking constantly
6 Once flour is cooked through (about 5 minutes), add the milk and whisk until sauce is smooth
7 Add the nutmeg, and season the salt, under-salting to compensate for the cheese
8 Cook the sauce for another 5-10 minutes, then remove from heat and stir in the cheese until everything is smooth
9 Crumble the fried sage leaves, and mix together with the breadcrumbs and oil
10 In an oven proof dish, toss the Gnocchi, blue cheese sauce and spinach together.
11 Top with generous sprinkles of sage breadcrumbs
12 Bake in the oven at 350F until top is browned and sauce is bubbling, about 20 minutes
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