Butternut Mascarpone Gnocchi Recipe - Mascarpone Cheese and Butternut Squash Dumplings

hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with butternut squash and mascarpone cheese gnocchi or is it mascarpone i don't know it was al capone not el capone anyway however you pronounce it this was so unbelievably delicious and here's how i did it it was pretty easy i took a butternut squash i'm only going to use about half of it i want a pound in this recipe so i trimmed off the top cut it in half split that down the middle once that was split i put it on a plate covered it in plastic wrap and microwaved it on high until tender now i know we don't do a lot of microwaving around here but it works great for this you could roast it if you want but this is just a lot faster and easier so that's how i did it you can do it any way you want so that took me about eight minutes i unwrapped it i let it cool on paper towels and when it's cool enough to handle peel off the skin it should peel right off if not use a knife so there we go i got about two cups all together and i'm gonna set that aside until needed all right for the rest of the mixture so easy some mascarpone cheese very very rich italian cream cheese we're also gonna add a couple large eggs some salt some black pepper and some parmesan cheese okay finely grated parmesan and once that's grated in there i'm going to give this a mix and right here i realized why am i trying to mix this with a spatula so i switched to a whisk which is going to do a faster and better job and you want to whisk that together until it's all smooth and it looks like that all right and then we're going to throw in which by now is just barely warm butternut squash i'm going to whisk that in i'm going to mash it i'm not going to puree this in a blender which some recipes will have you do i actually want those little tiny particles of squash intact i think it's a little harder to work with but i think it's much better for the final product all right and then the final ingredient here which i'm going to stir in in a couple additions is just regular all-purpose flour not much i'm only going to put in about a cup unlike most traditional gnocchi recipes this is not a dense chewy kind of firm gnocchi this is a very soft light tender dumpling so we don't want to do too much mix in here as soon as the flour disappears that's it it'll look like that which is too soft to work with so we're going to wrap it in plastic and we're going to refrigerate this hopefully overnight at least four or five hours but overnight's better and you'll notice the next day it's pretty much firmed up and will let us form our dumplings but before we unwrap this and start that process we need to do two things we're gonna bring some salted water to a boil now i'm using a shallow saucepan here so you can see what i'm doing you can use a stock pot if you want of course and we're also gonna melt some butter in a non-stick pan next to that water so just use medium heat as soon as the butter melts turn off the flame until needed all right and now the fun part to shape our gnocchi we're going to use two tablespoons the first one i'm going to stick in there i'm going to grab about i don't know maybe a teaspoon teaspoon and a half of mixture and i'm going to use the second spoon to push it off into the boiling water so very simple process first spoon scoops a little second spoon pushes it off into the boiling salted water now here's some good news no matter how bad a job you think you're doing at this it's going to look awesome when it's cooked gnocchi hate anxiety okay they don't respond well so i need you to relax and actually have some fun while you're doing this all right so our heat's on high we're going to do these in batches i usually do about 12 to 15 at a time i'm doing a few less here just for the camera and like a minute or two they're gonna float to the top and once they flow to the top i let them boil another minute so this whole thing only takes a couple minutes per batch and after they floated to the top and cooked for another minute i fished them out with one of these strainers right into my butter and you can just let them sit there until you're ready for final service and be sure to read the blog post where i explain what to do if you don't want to cook these right away but i do so i'm going to go ahead and crank my heat up to medium high and what we're going to do is we're simply going to brown these in the butter maybe three four minutes per side you have to be the judge but basically we want a nice golden brown crust and a light creamy center all right while that's happening i'm going to go ahead and season these with some black pepper some cayenne and another pinch of salt all right and after three or four minutes i decided mine were perfect to turn all right so you can use tongs for this i'm using two freakishly small wooden spoons by the way yes i believe this is the first time we've had hot freakishly small wooden spoon on freakishly small wooden spoon action so that's kind of cool all right so i flip those over carefully and we're going to give them a few minutes on the other side and while that's happening the last ingredient i'm going to throw in some thinly sliced sage leaves which just works so amazingly perfect with this dish so the sage went in i gave it another two minutes or so and at this point my senses of sight sound and smell told me hey these are done let's eat i remove those to a warm plate i'm just doing little appetizer sized portions i'm going to spoon a little bit of that browned butter over all right you don't need much like a teaspoon is fine was that maybe 30 or 40 calories everyone relax i'm gonna hit it with some parmesan cheese and there you go just unbelievably delicious that outside is golden brown slightly crisp from that parmesan kind of crusting up the inside impossibly light tender and delicious so i hope you give those a try this would make a fantastic first course for any winter fall dinner especially around the holidays so anyway head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more information as usual and as always enjoy

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 481,007

Keywords: Butternut, Mascarpone, Gnocchi, Recipe, Cheese, Squash, Dumplings, Italian, pasta, holiday, fall, winter, thanksgiving, appetizer, chef, john, foodwishes, first, course, cooking, food, Kitchen, Recipes, Cook, Allrecipes, recipe, recipes, Butternut Mascarpone Gnocchi, Butternut Squash Dumplings, how to, how to make, how to cook, make, cook, learn, cheese, side, dish, easy, simple, delicious

Id: APFiSxaCPo8

Length: 6min 2sec (362 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 16 2011