Sweet potato gnocchi with a tomato, prawn and courgette sauce

Ever since visiting Italy I have been dying to recreate and experiment with some of the amazing dishes I tried out there, however being thrown back into full time work and catching up with friends has meant I haven’t had much spare time. Luckily I had a rare free couple of hours this evening so decided to try and recreate one of my favourite meals I had in Lazise; prawn and courgette gnocchi.  Curious to whether gnocchi would work with my good old friend the sweet potato, I’ve experiment with an orange version of the Italian dumpling. For a first attempt the gnocchi went quite well, however I made the dumplings too big, so when you give this a try make sure you keep them small (I’ve altered the sizes for you). I’ve also fiddled with the sauce, opting for a zingy tomato version instead of the original cream sauce it was served with. This is me combining two dishes that I tried, as another evening I had a fab seafood, chilli and tomato pasta, so have added flavours from this. This recipe is a little tricky so give me a shout via email or twitter if you need any advice, but I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Serves 3

Ingredients:

For the gnocchi:

•          2 medium sweet potatoes
•          150g plain flour
•          1 small egg, beaten

For the sauce:

•          1 small onion
•          2 cloves garlic
•          1 tablespoon of tomato puree
•          1 tin of good quality chopped tomatoes
•          1 teaspoon of dried basil
•          1 teaspoon of dried chilli flakes
•          Salt and pepper
•          1 very small courgette
•          200g of frozen, cooked prawns

Method:

Peel and chop the sweet potatoes before placing in a pan of boiling water and cooking for about 10 minutes until soft. Once cooked, drain the potatoes and mash with a potato masher in a large bowl until smooth, then pop to the side to cool.

Whilst the potatoes are cooling, finely chop your onion and fry this in a sauce pan with a little olive oil. Use a garlic crusher to crush the garlic and after about 5 minutes add this to the pan with the onion. Once the onion starts to brown and you can smell the garlic, add the tomato puree, chopped tomatoes, basil, chilli and salt and pepper. Give this all a good stir and then leave to cook over a low heat for about 15 minutes.

Once the potato is cool, sieve in the flour and mix in the egg with a wooden spoon. This should form a doughy mixture, but can become a bit wet from the sweet potato, if so just add a little extra flour. Knead the dough with your hands on a floured surface for several minutes before rolling and parting your mixture into 2cm long and 1 cm wide sausages. Cover these in a light dusting of flour before refrigerating for 10 minutes.

Now you have time to finely slice your courgette before adding it to the tomato sauce, you can also boil a kettle and add the water to a new, deep pan on the hob. Remove the gnocchi from the fridge and add these to the boiling pan, these will sink so make sure they don’t stick to the bottom of the pan. The dumplings should take about 3 minutes to cook, you’ll know when they’re done as they’ll float to the top.

While the gnocchi is cooking, add the frozen prawns to the sauce and give it a good stir. When all the gnocchi have risen, drain away the water with a sieve and place the dumplings in a shallow bowl, add a generous dollop of the tomato sauce on top and you’re ready to eat!

Yes they look like chicken nuggets...my first attempt at gnocchi. Make yours half this size and I promise they still taste great!