Recipe of the Week - Sweet Potato Gnocchi

I have been trying to more creative with my cooking as of late and to help, signed up for the 'Daily Dish' newsletter from AllRecipes.com. There was one that came across last week for Sweet Potato Gnocchi and I just had to try it. I randomly get obessed with foods and sweet potatoes typically fall on my obsession list list for fall (during the spring, it's usually pears; corn in the summer; butternut squash in the winter).
First, I will tell you that it was SO good and totally worth the effort. Secondly, unless you have made gnocchi many times before, prepare for a rather lengthy preparation process. The rolling process took quite a bit longer than I orginially anticipated. You will find the recipe below, courtesy of Allrecipes.com. I've included my additions to the recipe in red:

Ingredients:
3 2 (8 ounce) sweet potatoes
1 clove garlic, pressed
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 cup brown sugar
1 egg
2 cups all-purpose flour


Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Bake sweet potatoes for 30 minutes, or until soft to the touch. Remove from the oven, and set aside to cool.

2. Once the potatoes are cool enough to work with, remove the peels, and mash them, or press them through a ricer into a large bowl. Blend in the garlic, salt, nutmeg, and egg. Mix in the flour a little at a time until you have soft dough. Use more or less flour as needed.

3. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. While you wait for the water, make the gnocchi. On a floured surface, roll the dough out in several long snakes, and cut into 1-inch sections. Drop the pieces into the boiling water, and allow them to cook until they float to the surface. Remove the floating pieces with a slotted spoon, and keep warm in a serving dish. Serve with butter or cream sauce.

The key to making the gnocchi is adding the flour in slowly.  My additions and changes were made to help the sweet potato stand out more. Cinnamon and brown sugar are classic pairings with sweet potato and it just made sense. As for the salt...I just like a little more salt in my food. The night we made this, we paired the gnocchi with an alfredo sause and it was amazing. Thankfully, we had leftovers, which I ate today. I needed something a little lighter for lunch than alfredo sauce, so tossed the gnocchi with a little olive oil and garlic salt. It was just as delicious, and the taste of sweet potato stood out more.

While the effort was well worth the end product, I was thinking about how nice it would be to cook a big batch of the gnochhi and freeze it. This would not only cut down production time in the future, but also provide me with a quick and easy dinner. After a little research, it turns out you can freeze it! But before you go dumping a whole bunch of gnocchi into a bag and throwing it into the freeze, a couple of things to note:

• After cooking the gnocchi, drain it and lay out on a cookie sheet to cool.
• Put the cookie sheet in the freezer with gnocchi spaced out so they don't freeze into one big clump
• After about 20 minutes, dump the gnocchi into a freeze bag!

Let me know if you make this recipe and how it goes!