Or, more prettily in Italian: Rotolo di Gnocchi con Spinaci. The original recipe is from Autumn in Piemonte: Food and Travels in Italy’s Northwest, by Manuela Darling-Gansser.

I made this recipe last weekend, with logistics help and moral support from Elph and a couple friends who were over! It was a bit tricky, so I’ll post the recipe first, with pictures at the end once you have more of an idea what the process was. My comments on the recipe are in blue.

serves 6

Ingredients:

For  the potatoes:

4-1/2 lbs floury potatoes, boiled
1-2 teaspoons salt
2 organic eggs, lightly beaten
7-10 ounces flour (I used Bob’s Red Mill General Purpose Gluten-Free flour)
3-1/2 ounces unsalted butter, cubed
10 sage leaves

For the Filling:

9 ounces ricotta
2 ounces freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano
1 organic egg
salt and pepper
unsalted butter
2 garlic cloves, crushed
9 ounces frozen spinach, thawed

(I found that my gnocchi roll was enormous – 15 inches long and about 6 inches wide and 3 to 4 inches high. Next time I make this, I will try using half the amounts listed above!)

Put the spinach out on the counter to thaw ahead of time. (Once thawed, I squeezed it quite a bit to get out excess water.)

Bring a large pot of salted water to boil and cook the potatoes until just done.

(Later in the recipe it says to saute the garlic and spinach in butter in a frying pan; I did it while the potatoes were cooking rather than having to do it later.)

(Also, you will need more boiling water to cook the gnocchi in, so keep another pot on the stove and bring water to a boil so you have it when you need it.)

While the potatoes are still hot, peel them and push them through a potato ricer. Now add the salt, eggs, and gradually, the flour. The amount of flour will depend on the kind of potato you use, but remember that the less flour you use, the softer the gnocchi will be. The dough should be soft, but not stick to your hands. (I used about 8 ounces of gluten-free flour.)

With a rolling pin, roll out the dough until about 1 inch thick. (I did this on a piece of parchment paper to make it easier to move later.) Mix ricotta, Parmigiano, egg, salt and pepper in a bowl and then spread it evenly on top of dough. In a frying pan melt a little butter and lightly cook garlic. Mix the spinach with the butter and garlic, cook a few more minutes, and then spread this on top of the ricotta mixture.

Roll the gnocchi dough, ricotta, and spinach into a sausage. Wrap the sausage tightly in cheesecloth or muslin, tie each end, and boil in salted water for about 10-15 minutes. Let cool.
(This was the tricky part. Using the parchment paper, we folded in the two sides to the middle as best we could – it was too thick to roll it up into a sausage shape. Then it took two of us to carefully lift the parchment paper and slide the “sausage” on to the large square of cheesecloth. I wrapped it and tied the ends with cooking (cotton) twine. Then two of us carefully lifted it into my roasting pan, set across two stove-top burners with boiling water in it. My roasting pan was the only thing large enough! It was not ideal since the water did not come all the way over the top, but we filled it as high as we could, and boiled it 15 minutes. Then two of us very carefully lifted it out, using various kitchen implements, and let it cool some. )

Preheat oven to 400F. Butter an ovenproof dish that will hold the roll comfortably, and carefully put the roll in it. With a sharp knife, cut it into slices about 3/4 inch thick. Sprinkle with freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano, then dot with cubed butter and spread sage leaves evenly over the slices. Cook in oven until golden-brown, about 15 minutes. (I used a cookie sheet since its the only thing it would easily fit on. It was a bit hard to cut, I wiped the knife blade clean between each cut.)

Getting the slices apart when serving was a bit tricky too, but again if I wiped the spatula clean between each piece it helped. I served this with two other dishes from the same cookbook: Cipolle Rosse al Forno (baked red onions) and Cavolo con Acciughe (cabbage with anchovies). I have to admit we did not have a Piedmontese red wine to go with, but the hearty chianti we did have went very well. It was a delicious meal, and we definitely earned our dinner!  PHOTOS follow.

Pushing the (lava-hot) potatoes through the ricer.

The potatoes with salt, egg, and flour added - the dough was still nicely soft but a lot less sticky than it was before I added flour.

Spreading first the ricotta mixture and then the spinach on top of the potato mixture. Note the parchment paper to help later with moving it!

We used the parchment paper to help roll up the sides of the "sausage" ideally I think the dough would have covered the filling completely

Moving the roll to the cheesecloth

I tied the ends of the cheesecloth "log" with cotton twine

Then, carefully into the roasting pan of boiling water for 15 minutes

Once boiled, we lifted it out of the water (2-person operation), laid it on a cookie sheet, and untied the strings

Then onto another, buttered, cookie sheet

After slicing, we dotted it with butter and sage, and into the oven

15 minutes later, we were very ready to eat our lovely creation!

My dinner plate, with the gnocchi, baked red onions, and cabbage with anchovy - all Piedmontese recipes, which I'll post soon!

I was reading a book about Sicily recently, and the author described tasting a delicious ricotta cake there, traditionally made around Easter-time due to the high quality of the spring milk. I was intrigued – I think about ricotta in relation to stuffed pasta, or cannoli, but not as the main ingredient in a cake, so decided to try it. The recipe is mainly about letting the fresh ricotta’s flavor and texture shine.  And having tasted fresh ricotta at a dairy in Sicily, I knew I wanted to make my own ricotta.

Ricotta is very simple to make! I happen to live only a few miles from the wonderful Zingerman’s Creamery, and they provided me with 5 gallons of fresh whey, from a batch of a cow’s cheese they had just made. (If you don’t have a good source of whey, you can use whole milk to make ricotta, but I believe there are other ingredients involved so please google that.)

Step 1, was to heat the whey to 200 degrees F. While it was heating, I lined a strainer (I used two strainers actually) with very fine cloth – I used a thin dishtowel for one, and a piece of fine cheesecloth doubled up for the other. (There is also an extra-fine cheesecloth you can buy, called buttercloth, that cheesemaker supply places sell.) If you think you’ll want to use the leftover whey for something else after the ricotta (such as making sauerkraut, etc), put the strainer over another pot or bowl.

Heating 5 gallons of whey to 200F

The strainer over one pot and the whey in another

When the whey reached 200F, I could see the white milk solids precipitating out of the whey. I used a large glass measuring cup to pour the hot whey into the strainer, some at a time. The solids start to “clog” up the cloth so I poured in some, then went and did something else while it drained, and then poured in more. I used a wooden spoon to scrape down the sides of the cloth sometimes.

Me (carefully) pouring some of the hot whey into the strainer

The full strainer would take several minutes to drain.

I ended up with nearly 4 cups of ricotta! Which I hear is a high yield, which may be a fluke; I intend to try making this again in a few weeks and I’ll report back. Then we started in on the Ricotta Cake recipe (the full recipe is at the end). We lightly beat together egg yolks, honey, orange zest and juice, and lemon zest and juice, and stirred it gently into the ricotta.

An unusually high yield of ricotta

Mixing the zest in to the ricotta

Since my household is mostly gluten-free, Elph made an almond crust, instead of the traditional Sicilian pastry crust. He mixed almond flour with sugar, butter, cream, coconut milk, and vanilla, pressed it in to a pie plate, and baked it for 10 minutes or so. Then I scooped in the filling, and we baked it about 80 minutes at 350.

Pressing the almond crust into the pie plate

Into the oven

We enjoyed a slice right away – it has a lovely fresh, mild, creamy flavor, with the hints of citrus. And it was just as good the next day, with more citrus flavor, although our crust had gotten somewhat soft. Still delicious though.

Mm pie...

Recipe follows:

Gluten-Free Almond Pie Crust

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups almond meal or almond flour
1/2 cup confectioner’s sugar
3 tablespoons chilled butter or butter substitute
2 1/4 tablespoons cream or coconut milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 F.
Toss the dry ingredients together in a bowl and mix well, and then add the wet ingredients to the bowl of dry ingredients. Mix in a food processor until the dough forms a soft, workable ball. (Using a food processor is an easy way of mixing and handling the dough, but you can accomplish the same results using a pastry blender or wooden spoon.) Press the pastry directly into the pan without rolling, using your fingertips and the heel of your palm. Prick the pastry lightly with a fork and bake in a preheated 350 F oven for 10 to 12 minutes before filling.

Sicilian Ricotta Easter Cake, filling

4 cups ricotta
4 egg yolks
6 tablespoons honey
zest of 1 orange
zest of 1 lemon
1/3 cup orange juice
1 tablespoon lemon juice

(NOTE, next time I make this, I may use twice that much orange juice, and try reducing it down on the stovetop, maybe mixed with the honey, let it cool, and then add that to the ricotta, to get more orange flavor.)

Preheat oven to 350F. (If you just baked your crust the oven is already preheated of course.)

Gently beat the egg yolks in a small bowl until just combined, and stir in the lemon and orange juice and zest, and the honey. Then pour the mixture in to the ricotta, stir gently, and scoop in into the prepared pie crust.

Bake approximately 80 minutes until light golden in color. Enjoy!

Palermo – Caltagirone – Ragusa – Modica – Siracusa
(photos are at the end of the post)

We’re two-thirds of the way through our tour of beautiful Sicily, ten of us traveling in a half-sized, very comfortable bus that does well on the narrow roads. We’ve spent three nights each in Palermo and in Ragusa, exploring the food traditions of the two regions, enjoying the scenery, and learning about this island’s history and culture too, a complex mix of influences dating back thousands of years, including ancient Greek, Roman, Norman, Byzantine, Arab, and Spanish to name a few!

The meals have all featured foods of each region we’re in, and as seasonal and local as possible, including seafood, meats, vegetables and fruits, breads, cheeses. We have all learned to pace ourselves when eating here – there is so much fabulous food to try, and Italian culture is such that they serve multiple courses at lunch and at dinner – so cleaning our plates is an impossibility. So we are getting good practice at conscious eating. We taste each bite, and savor it, and don’t keep eating out of habit.

We’ve visited a 100-year-old artisanal chocolate-maker in Modica, watched them make their chocolate and then got to taste all the different kinds. We went to a small winery that treated us to a wonderful tasting of their wines, after the vinologist gave us a tour and explanation of the process. And we all sat down to a lunch together, featuring locally made foods including eggplant caponata, Sicilian pizza, salamis, fresh and aged cheeses, and marinated olives from their own groves.

And, yesterday was our cooking class! In the morning we went with Chef Claudio to get the ingredients. Our first stop was to a local dairy farmer and traditional cheesemaker. We learned about Ragusana, the aged DOC cheese that they make, and watched them make a batch of fresh ricotta and then got to taste it – so good. Claudio purchased the aged and fresh cheeses he needed. Then on to the meat market where we tasted salamis and Claudio bought a selection of meats, and the vegetable and fruit market where we learned about how he shops and about how different varieties of the same vegetable are used in Italian cooking and why. Back at the hotel that afternoon, we divided into four teams, each team assisted by one of more cooks, and we helped make that evening’s six course dinner! From fresh ravioli to stuffed chicken to fish balls to almond mousse and more. Was great fun.

Today, we head to the northwest of Sicily, to the area of Marsala. Onward!

Wine tasting at Ceuso winery west of Palermo

Part of our tasting lunch in Ragusa

Cathedral in Palermo

Ready for our cooking class!

Chef Claudio deboning a hen

Modica at night

Mmm olives...

Canolo!

The Zingerman’s Food Tour to Sicily starts Sunday!  I’m excited. Elph and I are going two days early, to help with a few final logistics. And, this also makes it far more certain that we will get there ahead of our guests, even if a flight is canceled or what-have-you. It’s such a wonderful thing to leave the day-to-day routines behind, to wake up my brain and senses in a different place and culture. I love listening to Italian being spoken. And I’m especially looking forward to enjoying the foods that I can only get there – like the freshly made unpasteurized ricotta, the wonderful cannoli, and the only almond-paste (called Pasta Reale there but the name I knew it by is marzipan) I have ever liked, with a pure almond flavor and not too sweet.

Freshly made ricotta.