Recipe
Gnocchi with peas, speck, and ricotta
Speck comes from the far north of Italy, from a province where the road signs are in two languages and about two thirds of the population speak German at home.
Alto Adige, or Südtirol, was Austrian until 1919 and has never entirely got over it, which is a description rather than a complaint. The food is the clearest evidence. This is a part of Italy where you can order a plate of dumplings called canederli or Knödel depending on who you are talking to, where the bread is dark and dense and studded with caraway, and where the cured ham is not prosciutto but speck: lightly smoked over beech, juniper in the cure, firmer and more assertive than anything that comes out of Parma.
That smoke is exactly why it belongs here. Peas, gnocchi and something creamy make a perfectly pleasant plate on their own, the kind of thing that tastes like it is being polite to you. Speck goes straight through it. Cook it first until the fat renders and the edges crisp, and everything that follows is built on a base of smoke and salt.
The ricotta is doing the job cream would do, and doing it better. A couple of spoonfuls stirred in off the heat with a splash of the cooking water goes glossy and coats each gnocco without any of the heaviness of actual cream. It also will not split when you reheat it the next day, which cream absolutely will, and which is the reason so many creamy pasta dishes are a disappointment at 13:00.
Shop-bought vacuum-packed gnocchi are the only sensible option on a weeknight and nobody in northern Italy would blink at it.
Fifteen minutes, start to finish. It is the fastest thing in this chapter.
- Prep 5 min
- Cook 12 min
- Serves 2
- Cost €€
Method
- 1
Put a large pot of salted water on to boil. Fry the speck in the oil with the crushed garlic over medium heat until the fat has run and the edges have crisped.
5 min
- 2
Add the frozen peas straight from the freezer with 4 tbsp of water. Cook until bright and tender, then crush about a third of them with a fork.
5 min
- 3
Cook the gnocchi. They are ready roughly 30 seconds after they float, and leaving them longer is how gnocchi turn to glue.
3 min
- 4
Take the pan off the heat and discard the garlic. Add the ricotta and a good splash of the gnocchi water, stirring until it goes smooth and glossy.
2 min
- 5
Fold in the drained gnocchi with the parmigiano, adding more water if it tightens.
2 min
- 6
Finish with the lemon zest and a great deal of black pepper.
1 min
Variations
Pancetta or bacon lardons instead of speck, though you lose the smoke. Mascarpone or cream cheese in place of ricotta. Add a handful of spinach with the peas. Mint instead of lemon zest is very good in spring. For a vegetarian version, leave out the speck and add 150 g of fried mushrooms and half a teaspoon of smoked paprika to replace the smoke.