Butternut gnocchi with blue cheese and sage

First
you have to roast the butternut. I like to slice the butternut in round
discs, peel and place them on a baking sheet and add a few cloves of
garlic, some sage or thyme and a sprinkling of sea salt.

Bake in a
moderate(180C) oven until fork tender. Allow to cool. When cool enough,
place butternut in a processor and blitz until smooth and creamy, add
egg mixture and squeeze out the garlic, which is now soft and add to
the butternut puree.

Add the semolina and very gently, with a feathery
touch knead the dough.

The
dough should be moist but not too sticky. It must have a pillowy feel
to it. Allow the dough to rest for 30 minutes or so! Cut it into 8
pieces. Gently roll each piece of dough into a  log, roughly the
thickness of your thumb. Use a knife and cut pieces every 3/4-inch/2cm.
Dust with flour.

If you have a gnocchi board use that to shape your
gnocchi, otherwise make little dumplings and press up against a fork to
make the indentations. Sprinkle with more flour.

Now get
a big pot of water boiling, add about a tablespoon of salt and cook the
gnocchi in batches by dropping them into the boiling water.

You will
know when  they are cooked because they will pop back up to the top.
Fish them out of the water  with a slotted spoon ten seconds or so
after they’ve surfaced.

While the gnocchi is cooking, get a small
pot on the stove and pour the cream into the pot. add the cheeses and
allow the cream to come to a slow bubble and the cheese to melt.

Once
you have fished out all the gnocchi, you can fry them in a little sage
butter, but I think it is just a tad too rich, so I serve them on a
plate with some of the Blue Cheese sauce over the top. Serve with a few
grindings of black pepper and some fresh sage.

Reprinted with the permission of My Easy Cooking. To visit My Easy Cooking’s blog, click here.