There’s a reason some things stand the test of time, be they recipes, ingredients or the suppliers of said ingredients. Fresh Express have been supplying some of the most premium and gourmet seafood and other pantry staples to hotels and restaurants in the U.A.E  for over 30 years, but (much to my delight) they’ve recently opened up a direct to consumer online retail channel and I am now having a field day ordering Maldon Salt, Cipriani pastas and Violet potatoes like it’s common practice. As we’re in October and I spied that they just added seasonal pumpkins to their website, I knew I had to make Pumpkin Gnocchi in Sage Brown Butter Sauce!

With October kicking off festive feels and better weather (Dubai winters are basically like U.K summers), we need any excuse to unleash all the pumpkin love. While I’m not a fan of pumpkin spice lattes per say (I think I’m a generation too old for that), I do love a decedent pumpkin pie or comforting pumpkin gnocchi in sage brown butter sauce. Today, I’ll share with you my recipe for the latter!

But first, some quick insights into the ingredients I’ll be using, all sourced from Fresh Express Online:

• Delica Pumpkin: from Italy, caramelizes wonderfully when roasted due to it’s high sugar content. When I cut into this, it smelled like cantaloup
• Maldon Salt: If you’re not entirely sure what the hype around Maldon Salt is, I highly recommend you watch/read Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosret. My sensei always tells me not to worry too much about how I make and serve tea, and to just let me love for the tea be felt. That’s exactly what Samin Nosret does: she really lets her love be felt, and while you could totally blindly love Maldon salt just based on her love for it,  it’s impossible not to appreciate the superiority of Maldon Salt and the difference this artisanal, pyramid-shaped, fine, flakey salt that has been around since 1882 makes to your food with it’s intense and clean taste. There’s a reason it has been granted the Royal Warrant since 2012 and is the official purveyor of salt to Her Majesty the Queen of England, and why it’ll be the salt of choice in my take on Pumpkin Gnocchi.
• Black Garlic: Black garlic is essentially just regular garlic but with so much more depth and umami because it has been aged in 80-90% humidity, at temperatures between 60-90 degrees, for anywhere between 15-90 days. What results, as a product of the Maillard reaction (a reaction between reducing sugars and amino acids), is a sweet, syrupy, jellylike, black garlic with hints of balsamic and tamarind- a whole lot softer than fresh garlic, and I can only imagine how much this will elevate the Pumpkin Gnocchi I make.
• Potatoes: You want starchy potatoes for this dish.
• Parmegiano Reggiano: often synonymic with Parmesan, Parmeggiano Reggiano is aged for at least 2 years and is far more superior as only when produced in certain Italian states, does it earn that name.   Modena is one of those states, and Massimo Bottura deserves great credit for saving the Modena economy by encouraging the global use of their Parmegiano Reggiano and rice (two products badly affected by the 2006 earthquake) in his risotto cacio e pepe recipe. He hosted a global online fundraiser to share his recipe and have the attendees try it at the same time, and it was such a hit that all 360,000 wheels were sold. Called ‘The King of Cheeses’ in Italy, and I trust the Italians wouldn’t throw that term around carelessly, this granular, cheese is ingrained in Italy’s culture but loved and appreciated all over the world.
• Flechard Butter: from Normandy, this butter has 82% butterfat and excellent for making pastry given it’s soft and smooth texture and good fermentation tolerance. As I always prefer French butter over all others, I’ll be using this in my sage and brown butter sauce for the pumpkin gnocchi.

Here’s how you can make pumpkin gnocchi (serves 4):

Ingredients:

• 3 cups of baked, skinless, mashed potatoes
• 300 grams of pumpkin (it’s equal to about 1 cup when pureed)
• 2.5 cups of flour
• 2 cloves of black garlic
• 1 tsp Maldon salt + more for boiling the gnocchi
• 1 egg
• 50 grams of butter
• 1/4 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
• 1 bunch of sage
• 1/4 cup Parmegiano Reggiano
• Extra flour for dusting and rolling

Method:

1. Cut a pumpkin in half, and roast it on the highest heat in your oven for 30-40 minutes, skin-down until you can poke a chopsticks in without any resistance.
2. Place 1 (or 2, depending on the size) whole potato(es) alongside the pumpkin, so that it bakes simultaneously.
3. Once they’re both done, cut the potato(es) in half so that it cools down faster, and once it’s cool enough to touch, remove the skins and mash.
4. Puree about 1 cup of pumpkin with black garlic.
5. On a flat surface or wide plate, place your flour and create a well in the middle.
6. Place the pureed pumpkin, mashed potato and egg in the middle of the mix till it all comes together. Do not over knead this as it will become gooey and hard to manage.
7. Cut the dough into 6 equal portions and on a floured surface hand-roll it out into a ling thin tube, of roughly a 0.5 inch diameter
8. Further divide the tubes into equal, one-inch pieces.
9. If you’d like, you can roll the gnocchi onto the back of a fork, thus creating a striped design on them, or you can cook them straight away
10. To cook the gnocchi, fill a sufficiently large pot with water, and add 2-3 tablespoons of Maldon Salt. Bring to a boil.
11. Lower the gnocchi into the boiling water. As soon as the gnocchi rises to the top, it is cooked. This will take about 10 minutes tops.
12. In another shallow, wide pan, heat the butter and sage, and let it simmer for 2-3 minutes till it becomes brown in color. Don’t mind the brown milk solids but make sure it doesn’t burn.  Feel free to add more garlic at this stage depending on how garlicky you like your food.
13. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the gnocchi into the pan with the brown butter, discarding all but a ladleful of water.
14. Shave the Parmegiano Reggiano on top, and serve!

Note: I remade this, but changed the brown butter sage sauce to a brown butter, five spice (1/2 tsp) and miso (2 tbs) sauce and it was also EXCELLENT!