Gnocchi with Courgettes and Sundried tomatoes

Here is a recipe very much composed by my previous algorithm, albeit the “what’s in the kitchen” variant rather than the “what should I buy?” variant.

It’s also influenced by the “I am feeling super lazy therefore I’m going to throw technology at the problem” style of cooking, using both the food processor and the pressure cooker. You could probably prepare it without the pressure cooker, you can certainly prepare it without the food processor.

Ingredients

  • 100g dry sundried tomatoes
  • 1 small red onion
  • 1 head of garlic
  • 4 medium sized courgettes
  • About 50g salted butter
  • 500g gnocchi
  • 200g feta cheese
  • “some” black pepper

Note: I used the sundried tomatoes directly from dry. This worked pretty well but I forgot that they have a lot of salt in them if you do that. If you have less salt tolerance than me you may wish to soak them a bit before you do this to leech out some of the salt. If you do it from dry then definitely do not add any salt to this dish.

Instructions

Step 1:

Peel but do not chop the head of garlic. Finely chop the onion. Coarsely chop the sundried tomatoes (I used the food processor, you could just use scissors). Add these with just enough water to dampen the sundried tomatoes (so they don’t burn) and the butter to the pressure cooker. Bring it up to pressure and then cook for an additional 5 minutes.

Step 2:

Meanwhile, grate the courgettes (again, I used the food processor, you could just use a normal grater).

Once the previous step is complete, add the gnocchi and grated courgette to the mi, crumble the feta into it and grate some black pepper on top. Mix well. Now bring the pressure cooker back up to pressure and cook for another 5 minutes.

Step 3:

Eat.

Notes

The flavours all work really well together. It’s a bit too salty for me (and I love salt), so I think next time I will definitely partially pre-soak the sundried tomatoes just to ditch a bit of the salt, but I think it’s otherwise almost perfect. I might try adding some capers next time for a bit of sharpness, but it’s probably not necessary.

In terms of quantity: This will look like it’s not a lot of food, but it’s very dense. It served three of us (and we were quite hungry) and we were very full at the end. It’s probably a 4 person meal if you add a side salad to make it look a bit less small – it’s certainly filling enough.

In terms of doing this without a pressure cooker: My guess would be that the best way to do it is to mince the garlic, fry it with the onions in the butter, then add the sundried tomatoes (which you should definitely pre-soak or use an already soft variety) after that. You may also want to pre-cook the gnocchi. It will be a somewhat different dish – it’s very hard to do garlic like a pressure cooker does garlic – but it will likely still be very tasty.

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