tonight's dinner - spinach goat cheese gnocchi with mushrooms and burnt butter sauce

someone who knows me well, and knows i like to explore alterations to recipes, sent me this recipe for ricotta and spinach gnocchi with a burnt butter tomato sauce and wanted to see what i would do with it.

i did end up making a few changes:

used fresh baby spinach (worked out to be about 1.5 cups of fresh equaling the 1/2 cup of cooked/strained) (but i agree with her that frozen works very well) i cooked it with a bit of olive oil just until it wilted, then took it out, strained and pressed it and chopped it up very fine.

substituted 175g of goat cheese for the ricotta

used 1/2 cup of a good parmesan reggiano rather than 1/4 cup

used slightly more flour (this is more of a consistency thing than anything, if the dough seems soupy then add a bit more flour)

for the burnt butter and tomato sauce:

i did not agree with using olive oil and butter. olive oil is mixed with butter in order to increase the temperature at which butter begins to burn. this is done to give a butter flavor to a sauce but not have it burn under high heat. so i ended up using just 3 tablespoons of butter. you do want to stir this continuously after it begins to foam up. keep it moving under medium to medium low heat until it browns nicely and smells nutty

and as for the tomatoes which i agree would make a lovely sauce. i was at the market and they had all sorts of nice wood ear, crimini and oyster mushrooms which i could not pass up. i will end up using the tomato for something else today i think.

for the mushrooms i sauteed them with some additional butter until they were nicely done, then tossed them in the burnt butter sauce and poured it over the gnocchi.

she is right about the servings in her recipe. this dish is very very filling.