Gnocchi with Tomato and Black Pudding

I love my Sunday Roast, as I think I mentioned before.  There is no finer meal in a week and the care and devotion I put into the gravy and roast potatoes borders on obsessional. However, the downside to a roast dinner is it seems to take ages to make and is devoured in minutes (although that may just be due to my terrible lack of manners...)

So this week I thought that instead of roasting something, I'd try a completely different tack and do something I've never had before.  Whilst investigating soups (and in particular Nettle and Snail soup - which may just appear on the blog at some point in the future) I hit upon the idea of adding potato gnocchi to the soup.  Now I may have also mentioned before that I am a sucker for foods with beautiful sounding names, and also dumplings (which I can eat until I burst) and potato gnocchi seemed to combine both of those things in one cute little package, so how could I resist.

And also, because I'm obsessed with black pudding (this must be the sixth or seventh recipe with the stuff in it) I thought I'd chuck some of that in too, because, well, why the heck not...

Ingredients

For the gnocchi
500g Waxy Potatoes
150g Plain Flour
Handful of finely chopped Fresh Basil
Salt
Pepper


For the Sauce
1 Tin Chopped Tomatoes
250g Black Pudding
1 Onion
75ml Red Wine
1tsp Balsamic Vinegar
1tsp Finely chopped fresh rosemary
2 Cloves Finely Chopped Garlic

1.  Peel the potatoes, chop into cubes and put into a pan of boiling salted water for 15 minutes, until the potatoes are soft.  Drain them and allow to cool

2.  Mash the potatoes.   I used a potato ricer for this because you want the mash to be as smooth as possible.

3. Put the mashed potatoes into a mixing bowl, then add the flour, chopped basil, salt and pepper.  Combine the mixture like you would if you were making a dough, then kneed gently for 2-3 minutes until the dough is nice and smooth.

4.  Spead some flour on a worktop and then roll the dough out into a roll thats about 1-1 and a half cm thick, then cut into 1-2cm pieces.  Set these aside for now.

5.  Fry the finely chopped onion and garlic in some oil until the onion is just starting to colour.  Then add the red wine, vinegar, rosemary and some black pepper.  Bring this to a simmer and cover.

6.  Cut the black pudding into 1cm cubes.  Ina frying pan, heat some oil and yhen fry the black pudding until it starts to brown.  Then transfer to the sauce.

6.  In a very large pan. bring some water to the boil, then put the gnocchi in, cooking for about 2 minutes, until they start to float to the surface.  Drain them well then put onto a heated plate and serve with the sauce and a grating of fresh parmesan.  Enjoy!