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My gnocchi are yellow. They always have been. That is the way my mamma taught me to make them, with beautiful yellow potatoes. Having recently had success making eggplant and potato gnocchi, I decided to continue with the theme of adding other vegetables to the traditional potatoes in gnocchi. When I looked through what words and sentences had been used by you, the readers of this blog, in searching for recipes, I found beetroot gnocchi. Red gnocchi. Fascinated by the idea, I decided to do a bit of searching myself and found my favorite of the Two Greedy Italians, Gennaro Contaldo and his beetroot gnocchi recipe. Well how could I resist?

I was going to modify the sauce that went with the beetroot gnocchi, adding goats cheese, walnuts, dill or other things that are traditionally married with beetroot. But the pantry was bare and I had the simple ingredients that Signor Contaldo’s recipe required, being oranges, sage leaves and butter. So this is what I did without too many changes. And I loved the results. Really loved it. Mark proclaimed that it was his new favorite meal and I think it has become mine as well. It looks dramatic, tasting sweet and salty at the same time. The richness of the butter sauce and the fragrance of the sage blend beautifully with the zesty bite from the oranges.

Be prepared to end up with bright red hands though. Mark thought I had slaughtered the neighbours when he came in and caught me red handed making the gnocchi dough. Or you could use gloves when handling the beetroot. The recipe below will make a good size entree portion for four people. Serve the red gnocchi with a glass of red wine, of course, to follow the theme. A Sangiovese will do nicely.

Red gnocchi*
serves 4 as an entree
300g fresh beetroot (200 g beetroot puree)
550g Desiree potatoes (500g potato puree)
150g plain flour
1 small egg, beaten (or half a large egg)
Juice of half an orange
Zest of one orange
Sage leaves, fresh, about 20 small ones
120g unsalted butter
Salt to taste

To make the beetroot puree, start the day before. Wash and trim the beetroot and cover with cold water in a saucepan. Simmer covered until the beetroot are cooked through and soft when pierced with a fork but continue to retain their shape. How long you need to cook them depends on the size of the beetroot, mine took just over an hour and were medium to large beetroots.

Remove the cooked beetroots from the water and peel while hot. The skin should rub off easily. Use gloves if you don’t want to end up with red hands. Place peeled and roughly chopped beetroot into a small food processor. Process until smooth. You can also pass the puree through a sieve to make sure there are no little pieces of beetroot left. Place in a drainer and allow liquid to drain from the puree overnight. You don’t need to do this but it will result in gnocchi that absorb less flour when you are making the dough and therefore they will be softer. You will need 200g of beetroot puree for this recipe.

To make the the potato puree, place the washed unpeeled potatoes in cold water in a saucepan. Bring to the boil and simmer until cooked through. Remove from the water, peel, and pass through a fine sieve. Lay the potato puree on your working surface to cool. Once cooled, scatter on the drained beetroot puree, half the flour and the egg. Incorporate to make a dough. You can also do this stage in a large bowl. Add the rest of the flour (or as much as you need to make a dough that can be rolled). Salt to taste. Cut off sections of the dough, roll into long thin sausages and cut off 2 cm pieces with a sharp knife to make gnocchi. Repeat with remaining mixture until you have made dozens of tiny gnocchi. Dust with a bit more flour if needed.

To cook, bring a large pot of salted water to the boil. Add the gnocchi one at a time to the boiling water and cook until they rise to the surface (2 or 3 minutes). You will need to cook the quantity of gnocchi in this recipe in two batches or use two pots of water. Remove the cooked gnocchi from the water with a slotted spoon and place in the frypan where you have made the sauce (see below). Toss in the pan until they are covered in the buttery sauce and it has thickened (will take a couple of munites) and serve, scattered with plenty of freshly grated parmigiano and the orange zest.

To make the sauce, melt the butter in a large frypan. Add the sage leaves and cook for a few minutes until they are fragrant. Do not let the butter burn. Add the orange juice and heat through. The sauce takes about 3 our 4 minutes to make so start it when the water has almost boiled but before adding the gnocchi to the water.

* recipe adapted from Gennaro Contaldo on BBC Food.