Gnocchi in a bkeila-style spinach sauce with sausage

Written By Roger

I think I've pillaged more Ottolenghi recipes for components than I’ve made whole ones. I doubt he’d mind - the man has published eleventy thousand recipes, and only three of them take less than a decade to make; he knows what he’s doing.

This is only a mild exception, in that after making the whole thing (which was good!) I immediately started reusing one of the pieces: the cooked-down earthy paste of fried spinach that you can add to any dish you want to make feel like it met saag paneer at a goth night. 

Anyway, in the dual spirit of making more sense than that last sentence, and showing my working, this is a knock-off/mash-up of two thoroughgoing bangers: 

I think it's pretty clear what I've done here, but there's a recipe below anyway. 

The soul of it is the reduced spinach sauce. It'll carry any spicing with a dark edge (you could go caricature Mexican) or brighten with some citrus. This is sausage and fennel seeds, because that’s a classic that won’t be argued with, but there are variations at the end.

Ingredients:

  • Frozen spinach, about 300g

  • Gnocchi, 200g (or other pasta, see notes)

  • Sausages, 200g (Lincolnshire for preference)

  • Vegetable stock, about 300ml (chicken also works)

  • Onion, 1 medium

  • Garlic, 2 cloves

  • Parsley, 40g

  • Tomato puree, 1tbsp

  • Fennel seeds, 1/2tsp

  • Oregano, 1/4tsp

Serves two, linear scaling.

Notes

  • Spinach - you could use fresh spinach, but I have no idea how much you'd need. Probably about double the weight? Could you use something else? Probably. A blend of chard and cavolo nero might be interesting.

  • Pasta – I've used boiled gnocchi (well, finished in the sauce) but you could use fried for texture, or another pasta. I've done this with linguine before, and could see pappardelle working. I have no reason to doubt rigatoni; ever, really.

Instructions: 

Defrost the spinach (I just use the microwave) and press out most of the water. It doesn't need to be squished dry, but get rid of most. Put it in a blender with the parsley, and blitz it to fine. Or fuck it up in a bowl with a stick blender or on a chopping board with a big knife. Whatever you have to hand.

Finely dice the onion. Crush the garlic. Measure out the fennel seeds and oregano.

Get a decent sized pan medium hot, add a big splash of (olive) oil. Remove the sausages from their casings, and crumble them into the pan. Fry the sausage meat, stirring occasionally to break up the bigger clumps, for 6-7 minutes, until we’ve got a bit of browning going on.

Add the fennel seeds, stir together and get the delicious goo off the bottom of the pan, and remove, retaining as much oil in the pan as you can.

Add a little more just in case, and then add the onions.

Fry them on a slightly lower heat for, again, 6-7 mins until softening. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, for a couple more minutes.

Raise the heat slightly and add the spinach herb paste, and the oregano. You may need a splash more oil. Don't be sheepish - we need this spinach to fry. 

Cook it stirring frequently until it darkens, for about 15 mins. It should brown to an earthy paste, but not actually burn.

Right fucked the colour balance here, didn’t I…

Add the tomato puree and work it through for a minute or two. 

Then add the stock, stir together, turn the heat right down, and let it all simmer together and reduce for 5 mins or so. 

It will bubble then thicken. You can let it out with more water or stock if it seems too thick.

At this point, if I'm serving it with gnocchi, I add the gnocchi straight to the sauce with a splash of water and just let it cook in situ for about 4 mins.

To serve with other pasta, cook it as per the packet instructions, reserving a little of the cooking water when you drain it at the end, and use this to loosen out and enrich the sauce a little, before tossing it all together at the end. 

 

Variations:

This is modular around a sauce base, giving you space to play. Here’s some ideas based on substituting the protein and tweaking the spicing around that change:

  • Salami & walnut
    Protein - salami cubes (cooked or uncooked), toasted walnut chunks

    Spicing - swap for thyme & black pepper

    Tweaks - no tomato puree, dash of white wine

  • Mushroom (vegan option)
    Protein - rough-chopped mushrooms, wild and chestnut, fried and reserved

    Spicing - swap for extra parsley and garlic

    Tweaks - no tomato puree, maybe a splash of lemon juice

  • Black pudding & cumin

    Protein - fried black pudding, cumbled over at the end

    Spicing - swap for extra cumin and a dash of allspice

    Tweaks - a splash of red wine

  • Chorizo
    Protein - chorizo, fried and reserved like the sausage

    Spicing - swap for extra paprika and a little cumin

    Tweaks - 1 extra tbsp tomato puree

  • Cod & potato

    Protein - cod or other hearty white fish, broken into flakes and stirred through at the end to just cook, maybe a prawn or two

    Spicing - none, but a squeeze of lemon won’t hurt

    Tweaks - rather than gnocchi, use about 200g small waxy/salad potatoes, cut into little chunks, skin on, blanched until just tender and added for the last few minutes

Roger
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Lentil moussaka (vegan)