Malfatti (spinach and ricotta gnocchi)

Just when you think you've exhausted every possible way of combining spinach and ricotta, along comes another recipe that makes you rediscover just how good these two ingredients are together!


As I was savouring these last week, I started wondering what it is that makes gnocchi (of any sort) so delectable. There really are very few sensations as satisfying as biting right into a warm gnoccho. I think it has to do with their density - you're basically taking a big bite of flour, with some other stuff mixed in (sort of like a very condensed sandwich?) - but that's just a hypothesis.

In any case, malfatti are truly wonderful, and a nice variant on the typical potato gnocchi. "Malfatti" means "badly made" in Italian, which is an odd name, considering how good these are! I think it may be because normally you'd put the spinach and ricotta inside the pasta (like ravioli for example), but here you just lazily mix them all up with flour and dump them into a pot of boiling water - far less time-consuming and tastes just as good, if not better!

Ingredients:
300 g. spinach
150 g. ricotta
All-purpose flour (as much as is necessary to get the dough to the right consistency - will vary depending on how watery the spinach and ricotta are)
1 whole nutmeg (or pre-ground nutmeg if you can't get a whole one)
A heap of parmesan
Salt
Pepper
Butter (for the topping)
Fresh sage leaves or parmesan (for the topping)

Thoroughly wash the spinach, and tear off any thick stems. Steam the spinach, in batches if necessary, until it wilts and reduces substantially. Let cool, squeeze dry, and then chop into little bits.

Grind the nutmeg to a powder and grate the parmesan. In a large bowl, combine the spinach with the ricotta, nutmeg, parmesan, salt, and pepper (you just need a pinch of the salt and the pepper). Mix in the flour, adding in just enough to get an elastic ball of dough.


Turn the dough out onto a well-floured board and knead a few minutes to thoroughly combine everything. Cut off bits of the dough and roll them into long strips about the width of your thumb. Cut each strip into little bits (the gnocchi), also about the width of your thumb, so you have roughly square-like lumps of dough. If desired, shape the gnocchi by pressing them into a cheese grater or other such implement and wrapping the ends around your finger as you do so.

I took this opportunity to make use of my gnocchi-maker (I don't think they're actually called that), which I bought in Italy the last time I was there. It's a little wooden board with rows and rows of indentations, so that when you press the gnocchi against it, you get the lovely little striped pattern that you see on gnocchi in stores and restaurants. Not really necessary, but lots of fun!


At this point, you can let the gnocchi sit out to dry for a bit, or you can make them right away. They also keep fine in the refrigerator for a day or so, in case you want to make them in advance.

When you're ready to make the gnocchi, bring a large pot of water to a boil. Salt it, and add the gnocchi, making sure not to crowd the pot - cooking the gnocchi in batches of 10-15 works well for me, though with a bigger pot you can cook more at once.

The gnocchi don't take long to cook - about 5 minutes. When they rise to the top they are done, although I usually let them cook another minute or two there. Remove the gnocchi with a slotted spoon, place in their serving dish, and add more to cook as you remove the first batch.

If using sage as the topping, wash the sage leaves and chop them very finely (do this while bringing the water to a boil). Heat some butter in a small saucepan and add the sage, if using. When all the gnocchi have finished cooking, place them in their serving plates and pour the butter & sage over them. If you prefer to use parmesan, simply place a pat of butter over each plate of gnocchi and add the parmesan over it, and then mix. The heat of the pasta will melt the butter and parmesan, resulting in a wonderfully rich condiment for a wonderfully rich dish!

Spinach and herb triangles

Since I can't seem to stop myself from buying spinach, I have to keep finding new ways to eat it! These spanakopita-inspired pastries were a delightful new discovery; the addition of herbs and freshly ground nutmeg livens up the spinach, and the triangles themselves are actually much simpler to make than you might think.


I had always thought that making your own phyllo dough was some crazy, outdated thing that nobody would ever do now that frozen phyllo dough is widely available. I envisioned bakers of times past rolling the dough out onto enormous bedsheets and folding the paper-thin dough over and over itself in a method that was far too complex and bothersome for anyone to deal with these days.

But in fact, making your own phyllo dough is actually quite simple! And the good news is that when you make your own, it won't dry out as fast as store-bought dough does. The bad news is that it will probably be impossible for you to get the dough as thin as the store-bought kind; however, if you care more about taste than presentation, then I'd strongly recommend trying to make your own, at least once.

Ingredients for about 20 triangles:
For the dough:
400 g. all-purpose flour
A small spoonful of salt
A couple spoonfuls of strained, freshly-squeezed lemon juice
4 large spoonfuls of olive oil
Warm water
Olive oil for brushing the dough

For the filling:
150 g. spinach
5 or 6 sprigs of parsley
5 or 6 sprigs of coriander (cilantro)
A bunch of fresh fennel leaves (can be substituted with dill leaves)
200 g. ricotta
1 egg
1 large shallot
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper
1 nutmeg*

*You can substitute the whole nutmeg with a few spoonfuls of ground nutmeg, but I've found that using a whole nutmeg and grinding it yourself changes the flavor enormously. The flavor is much fresher and more interesting - I think once you try it this way, you'll never want to go back to using pre-ground nutmeg again!

Sift the flour into a bowl and add in the salt. Add the olive oil and lemon juice and mix together, adding warm water a bit at a time until the dough is smooth and still fairly sticky. Turn the dough out onto a well-floured surface and knead about 10 minutes, adding more water and/or flour as necessary.

After 10 minutes the dough should me smooth and pliable - it should not be dry. Place the dough in a bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and leave to rest in a warm, non-drafty place for at least an hour.

While the dough is resting, prepare the filling. Dice the shallot and set it aside. Wash the spinach leaves very thoroughly, dry them, and chop or tear them roughly.

In a large pan, heat some olive oil and, when the olive oil is hot, add the shallot. When the shallot starts to change color and soften, add the spinach, in bunches if necessary, so that you only have one layer covering the pan. Let the spinach cook until wilted - a few minutes is all it takes.

Once the spinach is done, take the pan off the heat and let cool. Wash and then finely chop the parsley, coriander, and fennel leaves. Using a mortar and pestle, or other grinding mechanism, grind the nutmeg into a fine powder.

Combine the spinach and shallot mixture with the chopped herbs in a large bowl. Lightly beat the egg, and add that in, along with the ricotta. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and the nutmeg powder, and mix everything well.

If not using immediately, place filling in a covered container and refrigerate until ready.

When you're ready to make your triangles, preheat the oven to 180º C / 355º F and line a couple of baking sheets with parchment paper. Prepare the olive oil for brushing by pouring several spoonfuls of it into a small bowl.

Divide the dough into quarters, and leave three of the quarters covered while you work with the first one. Roll it out on a floured surface until you get a very very very thin sheet. This takes some time and effort, but keep going until the dough is as thin as you can possibly make it - the thinner the dough, the flakier your pastries will be. If the dough rips a bit in places that's okay, because you'll be rolling it all up on itself anyways, so another layer will cover the tear.

Once your dough is a big thin sheet, brush the whole sheet with olive oil and, with a sharp knife or other cutting implement, cut the sheet into strips about the width of your thumb. Spoon a dollop of filling into the center of the bottom end of one of the strips.


Fold the bottom edge of the strip over to the side to form a triangle over the filling. Then fold that triangle over its top edge into another triangle.


Continue folding the triangle over itself all the way down the strip, until you reach the end. Tuck any last bits of dough in, and place the triangle on the baking sheet. Repeat with the rest of the strips, and then roll the next quarter of dough out and continue making triangles until all the dough has been used.


Bake the triangles until the edges start to brown, about 10-15 minutes. Let cool and then serve.

Cannelloni with Squash and Ricotta

This is one of those dishes where you take one bite and immediately think "Oh my goodness! Why haven't I been making this before and how soon can I make it again?!" Yes, they are that good.


I don't know if I've ever eaten cannelloni before, yet alone made them, but I can guarantee that after these, I'll be making (and eating) them again soon! The idea to make cannelloni occurred to me mostly because I have a whole lot of ricotta to get rid of. I'm leaving on Friday and won't be back for a week and a half, so my meals for these past few days have consisted of creative combinations of perishables that must be eaten or suffer the sad fate of being thrown away.

Anyways, I'd had a lot of spinach and ricotta recently, so I decided to try something different and mix the ricotta with a nice acorn squash I had, and then I just needed to figure out what kind of pasta to pair it with. Squash and ricotta cry out stuffed pasta to me, but I was a bit tired of ravioli and tortelli, and I wanted to try something different. So... baked pasta! An interesting experiment that turned out quite deliciously.

The squash ricotta pairing yields a lovely, delicate taste and a topping of béchamel and grated parmesan finishes it off perfectly. This recipe makes about 6 cannelloni:

For the pasta:
6 pasta sheets (if you want to make your own, see here for a pasta dough recipe - though you'll probably need to double it)

For the filling:
1 medium-sized squash (acorn worked very well here, I'm sure other winter varieties like butternut squash would too)
250 g ricotta
Grated parmesan
Nutmeg
Salt
Pepper

For the béchamel:
50 g butter
A few large spoonfuls of flour
200 ml milk

Preheat the oven to 355º F/180º C. Cut the squash in half and scoop out all the seeds. Cover a baking sheet with aluminum foil and place the squash halves onto it, cut side down. When the oven is hot, put the squash in and let bake until soft, about 30-45 minutes depending on the size and type of squash.


When the squash is done, remove the baking sheet, turn the squash halves over so the cut side faces up and let them cool. Meanwhile, bring a large pot of water to a boil, salt it, and add the pasta sheets, a few at a time if necessary.

After a few minutes, remove the pasta sheets and place onto a clean towel to dry and cool.

While the pasta and squash are cooling, make the béchamel by melting the butter in a saucepan, then adding the flour and stirring up. Add the milk and whisk everything thoroughly. Butter a large baking pan, and pour in enough béchamel to cover the bottom.

By this time, the pasta and squash should be cool enough to deal with. Scoop out the fleshy part of the squash and mash it up in a bowl. Add the ricotta and mix thoroughly. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and a healthy dose of grated parmesan and mix again.


Preheat the oven to about 400ºF / 200º C. Spoon 1/6 of the squash ricotta mixture onto the short end of one of the pasta sheets, leaving a bit of room at the edge. Roll up the pasta sheet and place into your baking pan.


Repeat for the remaining 5 sheets, and then pour the rest of the béchamel over the cannelloni. Finish it off by grating some parmesan over everything and then place into the oven and bake 20-30 minutes.

Serve warm.

Cherry Tomato, Ricotta, and Caramelized Leek Tart

I still had some pastry left over from my last tart-making endeavor, and I'd been aching to try to make my own ricotta for awhile, and so I thought, what better way to take care of both of those issues than by making a lovely ricotta-filled tart?


I always have lots of cherry tomatoes and I loved the mental image of little cherry tomato halves sitting pleasantly atop my tart, so there was ingredient number two. As for the leeks, I had picked up a couple at the farmer's market this weekend on a complete whim, with no thought about what I would actually use them for. The sweetness of caramelized leeks seemed like it would complement the tartness of the cherry tomatoes nicely and thus, a tart was born!

And it was certainly delicious - the leeks went perfectly with the cherry tomatoes, and the homemade ricotta was so fresh... the only problem was I didn't make nearly enough of it! Who knew that milk was made up of so much whey and so few curds?

In any case, the recipe for one ricotta, cherry tomato, and caramelized leek tart:

You will need:
Pastry dough - I strongly recommend making your own, but store-bought will also do. I make my own as in the tart recipe here
One quart/liter whole milk, the fresher the better
Small amount of cream if desired (I didn't use any this time)
A few spoonfuls of lemon juice
1 egg
About 10 cherry tomatoes
2 medium-sized leeks
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper

To make the ricotta, first set up a large bowl with a colander/strainer over it and place some folded-over cheesecloth on top of the strainer. If you don't happen to have any cheesecloth on hand, other types of cloth will do. People seem to especially recommend butter muslin, but I think any clean sort of cloth should work just fine.

Heat the milk and cream together with a little salt. Once the milk/cream mixture has reached a boil, immediately turn the heat down to low, stir a bit, and add the lemon juice. Stir some more, and when the curds (the solidish white things) start to separate from the whey (the cloudyish liquid part), pour the whole mixture into the cheesecloth and let it strain for as long as it takes. Mine was done pretty quickly, so I just wrapped the ends of the cheesecloth over the ricotta and let it sit until it was time to put it in the tart, but if you're not going to use it immediately, transfer it to the fridge when the whey has all strained out.

Homemade Ricotta
You can either keep the whey or throw it out. I felt bad about throwing it all out, so I put it in an old yogurt container and moved it to the fridge. Tomorrow I will probably be making whey bread in an attempt to use it up...

Going back to the tart-making, the next step is to caramelize the leeks. Tear off the very outer leaves, rinse, chop off the top part (with all the dark green leaves) and then slice cleanly lengthwise down the middle. The leaves will open out prettily, allowing you to rinse them out individually which is important, because leeks have a tendency to collect dirt inside.

Once your leeks are well-rinsed, chop them up into little rondelles, and heat some olive oil in a sauté pan (you can also substitute butter here, or a mixture of butter and olive oil). When the olive oil is hot, add the leeks, sprinkle some salt over everything, and turn the heat down to very low. Cover the pan and let sit for a good 30-40 minutes, stirring every so often. When the leeks are a nice brown caramelized color, they will be done and ready for the tart.

Caramelized Leeks
Preheat your oven to about 180ºC / 355º F. While it is heating, roll out the pastry dough and lay it into a buttered tart pan. Poke holes into the bottom and sides with a fork and then, when the oven has heated up, place the crust into the oven for about 10 minutes.

While the crust is heating, lightly beat one egg and add your ricotta to the egg. Add salt and pepper, and stir well. Chop the cherry tomatoes into halves and set aside.

After the 10 minutes are up, take the partially-baked crust from the oven and fill it first with the caramelized leeks, then with the ricotta-egg mixture, and finally place the cherry tomato halves on top in a geometric pattern of your choosing.

Return the tart to the oven and let bake another 15 minutes or so, then let cool, and eat up!

Spinach and Ricotta Tart

Another yearning-for-Italy dish...


Spinach is one of many foods I never realized I liked until I lived in Italy. And little wonder! As with many perfectly yummy vegetables, American culture gives spinach an unjustly bad rap, following the logic that anything that's "good for you" can't possibly be enjoyable. Perhaps this logic stems from our Puritan heritage, or perhaps people just didn't know how to cook spinach well, but in any case, Italian attitudes toward food tend to be about as anti-Puritan as you can get! The prevailing attitude there is that delicious food should be celebrated and enjoyed with no guilt or worrying involved (how can you enjoy something if you're busy worrying about its caloric content?), and spinach has been rightly recognized as a delicious food.

In fact, spinach dishes are just about everywhere in Italy, and they almost always involve a pairing with that wonderful spinach partner, ricotta. Spinach and ricotta on pizza, spinach and ricotta pastries, spinach and ricotta piadine, and on and on. In honor of that tradition, I'm posting here the recipe for a lovely spinach and ricotta tart that I made the other day. Enjoy!

Spinach and Ricotta Tart
For the pastry you will need:
200 g pastry flour (as always, I used whole wheat)
50 g sweet butter
1 egg
A pinch of salt
Cold water, as much as necessary

For the filling:
500 g spinach
200 g ricotta
1-2 shallots
A pat of butter
Salt
Pepper
Nutmeg

Begin by making the pastry a couple of hours before you want to eat the tart. In a bowl, sift the flour and salt together and then add in the butter, mixing well. In a separate bowl, lightly beat the egg, and then add it to the flour-butter mixture. Stir well, adding cold water as necessary to get a nice sticky little ball of pastry dough. Wrap the ball in plastic wrap and let sit in the refrigerator for 30 minutes to an hour.

Shortly before you take the dough out of the refrigerator, prepare the filling. First, wash and dry all your spinach leaves and set aside. Chop up the shallot(s) and then heat the butter in a pan until it starts to sizzle. When the butter starts to sizzle, add the shallot and let cook until tender. Add the spinach leaves, in stages if necessary, and then sprinkle everything with salt, pepper, and nutmeg, and let cook for about 10 minutes.

Once the spinach is cooked, take the pan off the heat and let cool. Preheat the oven to about 355º F/180º C and take the dough out of the refrigerator. Transfer the dough to a well-floured surface and roll it out to a thin but uniform thickness. Place the dough into a buttered tart pan (or non-buttered if it's non-stick), adding and cutting off dough where necessary to cover the pan with an even amount of dough. If there's any extra dough, wrap it up in plastic and put it in the freezer to use for a future tart!

Poke holes in the bottom and sides of the dough with a fork and then heat in the oven for 10 minutes. While the crust is heating, combine the cooked spinach with the ricotta and stir well. After 10 minutes, take the crust out of the oven, fill it with the filling, and place back in the oven for another 15 minutes or so.

Remove from oven and let cool a bit, then eat up!!