Luke Stuart, founder of the award-winning White Pepper Chef Academy & Cookery School at Lytchett Matravers shows you how to make knock up some gnocchi

If you don’t feel ready to make your own pasta, then try making gnocchi. These little potato dumplings are easy to make and cook in minutes. You can use the same sauces with gnocchi as you would use for pasta. If you go over to my website you can see me make this dish in my kitchen at WhitePepper and I also show you some sauces to go with this dish, including a great tomato sauce. An alternative sauce for this dish would be roasting a diced squash with fresh sage, olive oil, whole garlic cloves and sea salt before blending into a sauce with chicken stock or cream, or both!

Serves 2-4

250g floury potatoes,skins on

100g strong flour

1 egg yolk

25g Parmesan, grated

75g chorizo sausage, skinned and sliced

salt and pepper

semolina for dusting

To serve:

homemade tomato sauce and fresh basil leaves

Method

1. Quarter the potatoes and place in a pan of cold salted water. Bring to the boil, cook until soft, drain and cool.

2. Remove skin from the potato then mash the cooked potatoes coarsely with a fork. Sift the flour onto a clean work surface, make a well in the centre add the egg yolk into this and top with the mashed potato, parmesan and seasoning.

3. Taking care not to over work the mixture, bring the ingredients together, lightly kneading.

4. Once a dough is formed, divide into four and roll each piece to a sausage (chipolata size).

5. Cut each roll into sugar lump sized pieces. Dust with semolina and leave on a tray to rest.

6. Fry the chorizo over a medium heat until lightly crispy. When cooked remove and set aside, keep the oil in the pan.

7. Bring a pan of salted water to the boil. Add the gnocchi, they are cooked when they rise to the surface (about 2 minutes).

8. Remove with a slotted spoon and put the gnocchi into the hot pan of chorizo oil, add the chorizo pieces.

9. To serve: Assemble on a large sharing plate, add the tomato sauce, and top with fresh basil leaves and some slivers of Parmesan.

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