Name: Ricotta Gnudi
Total time: 1 h 30 min
Yield: 6
Ingredients: 2 c. whole-milk ricotta; 1 c. freshly grated Parmesan, plus more for serving; 2 eggs, beaten; Kosher salt; Freshly ground black pepper; 1 c. all-purpose flour, divided; 1/2 c. (1 stick) butter; 16 to 20 fresh mint leaves; 1 1/2 c. sweet peas, fresh or frozen and defrosted

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platter of gnudi with browned butter and peas and mint

gnudi recipe

- Hello, my name's Dan Pelosi. I'm so excited to be here in my apartment in Brooklyn to teach you how to make homemade gnudi. What's gnudi to you ask? Well, it's naked ravioli, a pasta that's made primarily out of ricotta cheese. We're making gnudi with brown butter, peas and mint. A perfect flavor combination. I grew up eating ravioli and I'm so excited to have a new version of ravioli in my life. I love brown butter. It's the perfect way, or one of many perfect ways to eat butter. And the combination of peas and mint is just bright and light and amazing. This recipe uses ingredients that you probably already have. I love it. It's super simple. The star of the is the ricotta cheese and also peas. I use fresh or frozen. Either way is the right way. We have plenty of Parmesan on which we're gonna freshly grate. We have our fresh mint, plenty of butter, a couple eggs and some flour. Oh, and don't forget black pepper. So let's talk about the star of the show, that's ricotta. Most times the base of pasta is simply flour and water. Today, the base of our pasta is our ground ricotta. We are going to first, get all of the moisture out of the ricotta so that we know that this pasta is going to stick together as we cook it and getting rid of the moisture will ensure that. Let me show you how we're gonna do it. What I have here is a classic sheet pan, some paper towels, and a spatula. I'm gonna take two layers of paper towels and I'm gonna put them on the bottom of the pan. So I'm gonna take this ricotta and I'm gonna spread it out at an even layer on these paper towels. Not that I've ever done this, but I imagine is what's spackling a wall might be like. In my home improvement fantasies, I'm sparkling my walls with fresh ricotta. Now's probably a good time to tell you, I'm not a perfectionist, but I do think it's important to get this in as thin of a layer as possible. So I'm really spreading it out and I'm feeling really good about where we're at. Now, I'm gonna two more layers of paper towels place them on top, one and two, and then I'm gonna press and let all that moisture seep through the paper towels. I'm gonna peel these paper towels back and you're gonna see how much moisture has seeped into them. It's kind of amazing. Look at all that moisture, gorgeous. Can you see me through it? Not quite. (laughs) I'm going to gently, wile making a mess, transfer this ricotta into the bowl. I'm gonna let it sort of release as much as it wants to onto the paper towels. Not afraid to use my spatula to get in there, to make it happen. You can see how it's forming a bit of a sheet, which we love. I'm gonna gently plop it into a nice mixing bowl. The next thing we're gonna do is add all the ingredients into the bowl with the ricotta, so that we can make our dough. The first ingredient we're gonna add is grated Parmesan cheese. Now this needs to be finely grated which is really the only important part about this. You can do freshly graded, which we're going to do now. Or you can get the store brought pre-grated. I find that both of them are absolutely perfect in this recipe. My cheese is grated. So I'm just going to measure out the cup that I need of this cheese. And I'm never worried about having extra grated Parmesan cheese because pretty much sprinkled on everything. Including my pillow before bed at night. I'm going to beat two eggs. (egg beating) We're gonna add everything to the bowl with the ricotta. First, we have our grated Parm, then we have our eggs. We have some kosher salt, plenty of freshly-ground black pepper, and then some flour. And stir to combine. I've got my same sheet pan. I've just cleaned it. Make sure it's super dry. I've got parchment paper. Now parchment paper loves to just roll up. So my favorite thing to do is this, ready? (paper crumpling) Okay. Stress relief, yes. But also it just kind of helps the paper lay flat. Ta da. Okay, gorgeous. Now I'm gonna take a little bit of flour, about a quarter crop, half a cup. I'm gonna spread it out on the parchment. What that's gonna do is give us a nice base of flour for us to put our balls of gnudi in. This is really important because this flour and then flour that we'll put on top are gonna help the gnudi stay together as they rest. So when we cook them, they'll have a little light layer of flour on the outside, which will be chefs kiss. It's very important to have everything with a little bit of flour on it because this dough is sticky. So I'm gonna flour my table spoon, get it nice and coated. I'm also going to flour my hands. You can get excess flour on the sheet, no worries. I'm gonna take my floured tablespoon, take a little spoon, scrape it on the side of the bowl. I like to have it nice and floured. So it drops in. And then just on up your hands, gently roll it in to as really as nice of a ball as you like. So, I wanna talk a little bit about the formation of these balls. It took me a while to figure out what the right sort of energy level to put into forming these balls are. I'm not a perfectionist, so I don't go too crazy. The first time I made them, I formed little patties and they had up looking like sort of naked chicken nuggets which was not cute, but it was really, it worked. But I decided that really these wanted to be sort of like an organic ball. But what I just wanna do is release you from any stress of perfection. And I just want you to have lots of fun and make a nice little mess 'cause that's all that matters. I'm gonna fill this tray up with gorgeous little gnudi. You wanna make sure that you've coated your gnudi on all sides with a light dusting of flour. This is going to help keep the gnudi together when you cook it. I'm gonna take these, put them in the fridge for at least an hour up to overnight. The longer they go in the fridge, the better. But you really only need an hour. Okay. We have our water boiling. I'm so excited to make these gnudi. Let's get going. I'm gonna take a couple heavy pitches of kosher salt and I'm gonna toss it in this water. I put my top over here. Grab those gnudi. They are well rested and honestly I'm a little jealous. Now this water's just like a gentle boil. So we are going to take the gnudi. We're gonna drop them in batches into the water. You don't wanna do them all at once, take your time here. They will, in about two or three minutes, float to the top of the water. That's how you know they're done. Once they float to the top, you're gonna take them out. Put 'em on your serving tray to rest. And add more gnudi in until you've completed the whole batch. Meanwhile, I'm gonna get going on our brown butter sauce. The reason why I love to brown the butter is that it adds a gorgeous level of flavor to the butter. You have an ad butter like this. Well, unless you've had brown butter. It gives it a nuttiness that is just gonna take this dish to another place. So what we're gonna do is whisk the butter over medium for about five to six minutes. You'll see that it actually starts to brown. You don't want it to get too dark. But you just wanna get it to a really beautiful warm brown place. About halfway through, we're gonna add some mint leaves in and let those crisp up. As soon as they get nice and crispy, we'll take them out and we'll put them on a plate to save for later. These crispy mint leaves are gonna be delicious on top of the pasta. Colorwise we're looking for a medium brown. We're doing brown butter, not burnt butter, there is a difference. And you'll really be able to see it. Keep in mind that after the butter has gotten to its brown place, we are gonna add the peas to warm them up a little bit. So really go less brown than you might think if you're a little worried. There you have it super easy, super delicious. I hope you make these gnudi at home. You can check out the recipe in Delicious Quarterly Mag and you can check out more recipes at delish.com and more of my recipes at danpelosi.com. You gotta go make them and you gotta tell me about it. I can't wait to see. (upbeat music)

Making gnudi—which only sounds fancy—is a fun project anyone can pull off. The Italian ricotta dumplings get tossed in a browned butter sauce with peas and crispy mint.

Ricotta Gnudi

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