Gnudi

Gnudi is something that I'd heard of but never tried. Many describe it as ravioli without the pasta. It is a dumpling with an extremely tender, smooth skin surrounding a rich, cheesy filling. It seems counter-intuitive to say that this isn't a time-consuming dish to prepare even though it takes 3 days to make.

Start by beating ricotta in a mixing bowl with salt, pepper, a small amount of half and half, and a drizzle of olive oil. My ricotta was a bit on the wet side, so I did a quick drain before mixing.

To form the skin on the gnudi, the ricotta dumplings are submerged in semolina flour. Put a thin layer of semolina on the bottom of a container, and drop balls of the ricotta mixture over the flour, making sure that they do not touch. Cover the ricotta with more semolina until completely covered. This will sit covered in the fridge for 2 days. After 2 days, some of the semolina is remove to expose the gnudi to the air, and is allowed to sit another day uncovered.

Its a good time to mention that this is a bit of an overdue post. I actually made these back in early August, back when fava beans were still in season. I served the gnudi with a fava/pea puree. To make the puree, I had fresh fava beans that I blanched, shocked in ice water, and peeled. I blended the favas and peas with a touch of half and half, nutmeg, raspberry vinegar, and salt and pepper. I also added a touch of honey to balance out the vinegar. It looks like I missed a picture of the sauce, which you'll see in the photo of the final dish.

After the gnudi had a few days in the fridge to develop a skin, they were removed. The gnudi were removed from the semolina and cooked gently in a pot of water. I was careful not to boil these as I didn't want them to fall apart.

The gnudi were removed from the cooking water and plated with the fava/pea puree, Parmesan, and a touch of olive oil. These dumplings are delicious, and difficult to put into words. They are extremely light, with a near ethereal skin holding the ricotta together. However, once the skin is breached, it exposes a rich, molten cheese filling. They really do seem like ravioli without skin. The dumplings are a bit of a blank canvas flavor-wise, so the pea puree was able to shine without dominating the ricotta. I will definitely make these again, but will try to make the ricotta balls a bit smaller and more uniform.