Penney’s Palate

This recipe caught my eye because it was labeled as a quick and easy dish. I am always suspicious about quick and easy dishes, and even more so of quick and easy dishes that do not have a lot of ingredients. I am always concerned that it will be boring and bland. However, this dish was not boring or bland at all. It was quick, easy, and the ingredients were kept at a minimum. The hardest part of this recipe was finding pre-prepared gnocchi. The original recipe calls for dried gnocchi, but all I could find was a frozen bag of gnocchi at Whole Foods. It worked just fine. Tommy and I gobbled this up pretty fast. I think that this will be inserted into our weekly pasta/risotto rotation (usually we eat pasta with sauce or risotto at least once a week).

I am also beginning to like peas more and more in foods. I think that I still do not like the idea of eating peas by themselves, but they tasted great in this dish with everything else. My favorite part was the hint of lemon that seemed to be present in every bite.

Creamy Lemon Gnocchi

Ingredients
1 cup frozen baby peas
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/4 teaspoon dried hot red-pepper flakes
1 garlic clove, smashed
Pinch of salt
3 cups packed baby spinach
Zest of one lemon
1 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 pound gnocchi, frozen or dried
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan

Preparation
Simmer peas with cream, red-pepper flakes, garlic, and salt in a pan, covered, for 5 minutes. Add spinach and cook over medium-low heat, uncovered, stirring, until wilted. Remove from heat and stir in lemon zest and juice.

Meanwhile, cook gnocchi in a pot of boiling salted water (follow directions on package). Drain gnocchi and add to the cream and pea mixture. Add the cheese and stir to coat. Plate and eat.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 7th, 2008 at 9:08 pm and is filed under Entrée. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.