Roast Pumpkin Gnocchi with Sage butter, Celeriac, and Fennel & Italian Spiced Pork Sausages

        So last Friday during our usual "What are we doing tonight" conversation Ryan said he wanted to stay in and cook (seems like all we do now, unless invited to some event). He felt like cooking with pumpkin and was thinking something along the lines of pasta with a pumpkin sauce as we have done before. I wanted to do something a little different and was thinking of attempting to make our own gnocchi and found this recipe for Pumpkin Gnocchi with Sage. It took a little bit of convincing to get Ryan to agree to the recipe, I think he is very fond of his pumpkin sauce.

        The contents of our shopping bags. That block of parmesan is meant to be peccorino, we were going to substitute it but somehow I ended up picking up the parmesan after comparing prices and trying to get the cheaper one.

         While picking up ingredients Ryan said he wanted to try celeriac so we bought one to try out - had no idea what he was going to do with it. But being something we both hadn't tried before I was keen.

        I was thinking we needed some kind of meat/main to go with the gnocchi as a side. Found these Fennel & Italian Spice Pork Sausages which sounded good and would be easy to cook.

        Just absolutely love fresh sage! We used the whole bunch this time, I find that I always overestimate the flavour of the sage and the other flavours always overpower it.

        My chef at work, I just helped with all the prep, cleaning and photo taking =D My battery was on it's last little bit of power though =(.

        Ryan picked up some knife skills during his time working as a waiter, he became friends with the chefs. There would be no way that I would come out unharmed if I was cutting something like this. I'm not very good with a knife at all though I love mum's cmall cleaver which I use for everything.

        Ryan's mum has a habit of collecting odd things around the place, this is pretty weird but cool haha =D. She's also fond of collecting duck themed things.

        So Ryan diced the celeriac and sauteed it with a bit of butter and a sprinkling of the nutmeg and lemon zest which I grated. He was going to make a puree of it but couldn't find the blender anywhere. He leaves it as is and mixes it through the gnocchi later.

        The pumpkin shrank so much after roasting and I was a little worried we wouldn't have enough to make the gnocchi. The recipe did say 500gr of pumpkin and that was more than half a kilo of butternut pumpkin which we bought.

        We (Ryan) mash up the pumpkin with the zest, nutmeg, and parmesan and then mix through the 2 eggs as stated on the recipe (we added one and mixed it through and felt it was a little runny and thought if the recipe said 2 we would add 2 thinking maybe the second egg would thicken the mixture a little).

        Ryan then adds the flour to the pumpkin mixture mixing it through and then turning it out onto the bench to work the flour through. I keep adding flour to it because it looks really wet.

        The gnocchi "dough" reading to be rolled and cut into pieces. Ryad had made regular potato gnocchi before and this was a first for pumpkin gnocchi.

        Ryan makes a few plates of these while I put some water on the boil and clean up.

        I'm in charge of cooking the gnocchi while Ryan finishes rolling and cleaning up the bench. It doesn't rise to the surface as quick as what I am used to when cooking premade gnocchi.

        The little dumplings are a little dense, I have a feeling we probably added too much flour and also overworked it. Ryan looks at me when I say we've put in a little too much flour. They are full of flavour though from the roast pumpkin.

        We just threw these into the oven after roasting the pumpkin while we make the gnocchi. They look a little overbrowned, Ryan was too busy with the gnocchi to keep an eye on them. I was in the other kitchen washing up.

        Ryan does the burnt butter and sage sauce to go with the gnocchi and mixes the diced celeriac through. I go and dump a sausage on a plate waiting for Ryan to finish with the gnocchi and spoon it onto the plate next to the sausage. I got told "Um is that how you're going to do it?", obviously not good enough of presentation for Ryan. Sometimes I get too lazy and by then it was 2 hours later and I was starving so presentation was the last thing on my mind. The only downside was the texture of the gnocchi but I loved all the flavours which made up for it. It was quite an earthy dish with the flavours of pumpkin, celeriac and the fennel in the sausages.

        For dessert I've bought us a treat of peanut butter and stracciatella (cookies & cream) Lindt Lindor balls - I'd actually bought a box of each. My two favourite flavours at the moment.