Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Spicy Pesto Sauce

How to make vegan, gluten-free gnocchi - sweet, soft and so satisfying!

I am a huge Tasty fan – you know – those fun, short food videos on Buzzfeed.

Heck – I am a huge Buzzfeed fan. I can spend hours on that site, laughing my head off at the hilarious lists with the wonderful tweets, instagram moments etc. I also get Netflix recommendations from there and awesome gift ideas as well.

But my favorite Buzzfeed page is the food page – even before it was “Tasty” #oldschool

Anyway, I’m not a big gnocchi fan, but the hubby and I are trying to cut back on the meat. We do not need to eat it every day. And we went to his sister’s house one day way last year and she made gnocchi from scratch – a new revelation for me. It was gluten free and tasted good. And then a year later, I saw a post on Tasty on how to make gnocchi. But little me, I can’t just take a recipe and make it as-is. I dreamt a recipe up for sweet potato gnocchi, infused with rosemary and cooked in butter and sage.

The best damn sweet potato gnocchi ever - you're just going to want more and more!

Of course, when I woke up, I decided that butter and sage would not be “saucy” enough for my liking – and where is the room to put in a jalapeno? (I put jalapenos in everything. You can feel free to exclude them from any recipe in here – but I recommend trying it with!).

And so the Sweet Potato Gnocchi in Spicy Pesto idea was born.

The sweet potatoes are more watery and mushy than regular potatoes and therefore took more flour than in the original Tasty recipe. I also used gluten free flour – and that just acts differently from normal, wonderful wheat flour.

Alright here goes:

Ingredients:

2 large sweet potatoes

2 cups GF flour (try 1.5 regular flour and add as needed) – you’ll need more flour to dust your rolling space and cover your hands with as you shape them.

1 large egg

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1 pinch hot red chilli flakes

Sauce:

1 jalapeno

Pesto sauce (I used store bought this time)

Suggestions for other sauces: saute in butter and rosemary or butter and sage.

Instructions:

1. Boil the sweet potatoes until they are soft and you can easily poke them with a fork (About 30-45 minutes)

2. Pour out the water and let the sweet potatoes cool (About 15 min)

3. Peel the sweet potatoes (after they are cooked, their peel just slides right off!)

4. Mash the sweet potatoes

5. Add in the large egg – mix well

6. Add in the spices – mix well

7. Add in the flour – mix well

8. Add in some more flour and don’t mix. Flour some counter space for the rolling and the cutting. Dust your hands with flour too.

9. Pick up some sweet potato mixture and roll into thin snakes (about 1 cm width – length doesn’t really matter as you’ll be cutting it). Spread the snakes out onto your dusted floury counter and cut them about a centimeter along the width.

   1. Once you cut along the snake – you’ll get little pillows of uncooked gnocchi. You can shape your gnocchi however you want. I like to roll the little pillows on the back of a fork to give them a fun shape. You can also poke a little indent into the pillow with your thumb.

10. Boil water in a large pot with some salt in it. Make sure the pot is filled 3/4 of the way with water.

11. Throw your gnocchis into the boiling water. They are done when they float to the top. Use a large spoon with holes in it to fish them out. Put them on a plate on the side.

    1. They should cook up in about 1-2 minutes

12. Heat up a saucepan with some oil in it.

13. Chop up your jalapeno and saute it in the saucepan

14. Pour the pesto onto the saucepan with the jalapeno

15. Pour in the gnocchis and saute them for approximately 2-3 minutes

16. Serve hot in a bowl.

    1. Serving recommendation: Feta Cheese and Parmesan cheese on top!

Enjoy!

Makes ~4 Servings

This is the first time I’ve written a recipe  – so please let me know how it goes!! Give me feedback so that I can tweak and perfect my recipe writing skills!

I’ll try to get more pictures along the way next time too, to help you visualize it!