Butternut Squash Gnocchi

Now that my herculean task of working the evening shift and sometimes double shifts at work has ended, I am taking the opportunity to recharge my batteries.  Part of that unwinding began last night, being back in the kitchen and making fresh pesto.  That has continued today with yet more culinary shenanigans and some down time in one of Leeds' fantastic independent coffee shops, Brewbar Espresso.

This morning, having packed R off to nursery and Z off to work I cracked on with my plans for tonight's meal, butternut squash gnocchi.  Having roasted a butternut squash for pumpkin risotto, and made mashed potato for fish pie over the weekend I had leftovers of both.  I combined the squash and potato, added flour and an egg and got rolling.  To start with I didn't think that I would have enough to make a decent meal for Z and I, but I managed to make enough dumplings for two meals, so half of the mixture has ended up in the freezer for a future treat.

Chores out of the way, I headed into Leeds for lunch and a leisurely afternoon sipping coffee and catching up on some reading*.  Brewbar is a nice, relaxed coffee shop under Leeds library, the coffee is fantastic and the music, at least today, was somewhere between Regina Spektor and Mike Oldfield and that suited me fine.

Back home I returned to the gnocchi.  There isn't really a cooking time for gnocchi, they are cooked once they float to the top of a pan of boiling water.  I'm not a fan of heavy or thick sauces with gnocchi so I decided to keep it simple and make a brown butter sauce with sage.  It was a good job too, the addition of the butternut squash made the dumplings sweeter but also more dense than normal potato gnocchi.  I'm now looking forward to eating the second batch that are in the freezer.

*and writing blog posts for evening meals that had been missed.