This recipe makes about 1 cup of pesto.
1/2 cup toasted pine nuts
4 cups fresh arugula, loosely packed
1/2 cup finely grated hard cheese, like Parmesan or your local equivalent
1 ramp (bulb and leaves)
coarse salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

Chop the ramps and grate the cheese. Put pine nuts, arugula, cheese, ramps, and olive oil, in a blender and blend until there are no lumps. Since it is a lot of greens, you may need to pause the blender and stir it up a bit manually to make sure the greens on the top are pureed. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Quick Ricotta gnocchi
Recipe source: own creation, inspired by many others
Prep time: ~15 minutes
Ingredients (for 2):
250 g Ricotta
1 egg yolk (M-L)
1/4-1/2 tsp fine sea salt
30 g Parmigiano (or Pecorino), freshly grated
50-75 g all-purpose flour, extra for dusting the dough/board

Discard any excess liquid that the Ricotta's packaging may contain, then add Ricotta cheese, egg yolk, salt and freshly grated Parmigiano into a large bowl. Mix well with a wooden or regular spoon. Now add the flour and stir in briefly, just until combined - the dough will still be quite sticky. (Of course you can add more flour at this point, but keep in mind, that the more flour you use, the denser the gnocchi become in the end. And you want them to be as light & fluffy as possible, with a velvet-like texture.)
Forming these gnocchi is the slightly tricky step, this is the technique that works best for me: Generously flour a board, take a big tablespoon of the dough and scoop it onto the board. It gets dusted with flour (dust your hands generously, too!), before rolling it into a finger-thick roll. Cut it into little pillows (stick the knife's blade into the flour to prevent it from sticking to the dough). Then place each gnoccho on a floured board or parchment paper lined baking tray. Continue quickly with the next step, otherwise they will get soggy and stick to the paper/board anyway.
Meanwhile bring a large pot of water to a boil, add a generous pinch of salt and reduce heat until the water bubbles lightly. Add the gnocchi and stir once, so they don't stick to the bottom - then let cook until they start floating on top. Depending on their size this may take 2 to 4 minutes. Take out with a skimmer and serve immediately. I like to serve them either with a simple tomato sauce (like this one or this one), browned butter with fresh sage or any kind of pesto (my current favorite: roasted peppers, toasted pine nuts, Parmigiano and olive oil).

deliciousdays

SWEET RICE DESSERT WITH RAISINS, GINGER, NUTS AND HONEY - GLUTEN-FREE

3-4 servings250 ml/

1 cup fine grained rice, not parboiled

1-2 tblsp sugar

100 ml/0,42 cup raisins

a piece of fresh ginger

50-75 g/1,7-2,6 oz nuts, I recommend soft nuts like walnuts or pine nuts.

3-5 tblsp runny honeyrum,

Cook the rice in water with sugar.

Let it cool down.-

Chop ginger, raisins and nuts finely and add the honey.-

Add the rice mix very well and put it in the fridge to get cold.-

Serve with a drizzle of honey.

yum