Beetroot Gnocchi
I think my kids would eat beetroot with every meal if we had enough in the house. I love this vegetable, because in a way, it changed everything for us. My daughter was not a fan of it originally. Beetroot and mushrooms were stubbornly refused, as were most green vegetables (with the exception of broccoli for some reason), as she went through that famous 2-3 year old “fussy phase”. She still ate veg, and she had a good balanced diet, but I figured that, as an experiment of sorts, I would just keep offering all vegetables (including those two) to her and see what happened.
I was not a mushroom fan either, and in solidarity, I would make sure she saw me try some every time, too. Within a few months of asking her to try it, and eating it along with her, many times, something changed. She suddenly LOVED these vegetables. In fact, to this day, they are two of her favourite vegetables. And even two of her favourite foods.
As I’m sure you all know by now, I am passionate about trying to get kids to more veg. It goes hand in hand with eating less sugar, and in many ways (despite the website name) is where I prefer to put more focus. Both are intertwined, since it was only in coming off sugar and effectively “getting my tastebuds back” that I came to really love vegetables myself. Suddenly they tasted far sweeter, fresher and more delicious.
But I also found that the more vegetables I ate, the more I wanted to eat. And I knew that, particularly for children, an emphasis on the positive and on what you can eat rather than what you can’t, or on what foods make you stronger, better, smarter, more beautiful and more healthy rather than which ones made you sicker, spottier, weaker and angrier, was always going to go down better!
But the great thing about going about it this way is that the perseverance is paying off already. My son is now smack-bang in the middle of his 2-3 year old “fussy phase”, often made worse by teething. He has a thing about “crunchy” foods and distrusts green things right now. But on a good day, I have seen him put away his own body weight in green vegetable crumble and one thing has virtually never been turned down: beetroot. I’m not worried about his fussy phase. I will keep offering. Some days he eats them, some days he doesn’t. He doesn’t get another option, and after a few hours he is usually hungry enough to give them a go. Either way, I trust that he will come to love his veggies once more, just as his sister has. We eat so many of them in our house he doesn’t exactly have much of an option!
And in the meantime, I will keep making these, and so many other beetroot-filled meals. Because I know they will disappear quickly any day. 😉
Plus, then I get to enjoy the sweet, vibrant-coloured, soft little vegetable-filled “gnocchi” that I love.
Homemade vegetable gnocchi made in a blender in a matter of minutes? Yes please! These vibrant beautiful pasta shapes are sweet, soft and delicious.
- 250 g (9oz) cooked beetroot (beets)*
- 100 g (1/2 cup) ricotta** or cottage cheese
- pinch of sea salt
- 1 medium egg
- 100-200 g (3/4 - 1 and 1/2 cups) flour (I like to use wholegrain wheat, buckwheat or spelt)
- unsalted butter, for frying
- pesto, to serve
- feta cheese, to serve (optional)
- wilted greens or salad, to serve (optional)
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Blitz beets to a puree in a food processor. Add ricotta, salt and egg and blitz to combine again. Add 100g (3/4 cup) of the flour and pulse to combine. If the mixture looks like it needs more flour to form a soft dough, add more flour (I do it 50g at a time). Once it forms a soft slightly sticky dough, turn it out on to a well floured surface and divide the dough into two. Form each half into a long thin sausage shape, rolling to coat lightly in the flour so it doesn't stick. Use a sharp knife or pizza cutter to cut small even sized rectangles all the way along the sausage shape. It doesn't matter much how big they are, more that they are all more or less even so they cook at the same time. Repeat the process with the second half of the dough.
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If you want to give them the classic gnocchi look, press down on each rectangle with a fork to leave a slight indent. You can boil the gnocchi for 3-4 mins until the float to the top of the water if you like, but I think they taste far softer and yummier when fried in a couple of tablespoons of butter or a mix of butter and olive oil. I fry them for about 3-4 mins, stirring regularly to brown all over, then stir through a tablespoon or so of pesto (ideally homemade with lots of greens) and serve them warm scattered with some crumbled feta and a side salad or some wilted greens and an extra glug of extra virgin olive oil.
* for extra nutrition and cost saving, buy raw beetroot, cut off the green tops (use in place of spinach in dishes - they are lovely wilted in with the gnocchi), scrub clean, pierce all over with a sharp knife and roast at 220C/425F/gas 7 for 45 mins-1 hour until a sharp knife inserted into the largest beetroot slides in easily all the way to the centre to show the beetroot is soft and cooked throughout. Cut or peel off the skins once they've cooled and use the same as the packaged cooked beets in anything you like, including these gnocchi!
**I make my own to save money - it takes less than 5 mins of hands on time, uses on hand ingredients and is very cheap and yummy. You can find my recipe here.
