South Tyrolean Spinach Dumplings

BLOGGER: KATELYN

This is a great recipe from one of my vegetarian cookbooks that we tried the other night. The dumplings are pretty easy to set up and take very little time to cook. With it’s simple ingredients, it is a nice recipe to make in a pinch if you don’t have time to run to the store or if you just want to use up some old bread you have on hand.

Here is the recipe:

1/2 loaf day old white bread (we used potato bread)

3/4 cup milk

1 3/4 cup spinach

1 onion

2 garlic cloves

1 stick butter

1/4 cup fresh ricotta

1/2 cup grated parmesan

1 1/4 cup flour

2 eggs

salt and fresh ground pepper

fresh grated nutmeg

Place sliced bread into a bowl, spoon the milk over top. Leave to soak while you are preparing the rest of the ingredients. Sort the wilted leaves from the spinach and discard, pinch off thick stems. Rinse, pat dry and chop spinach (we didn’t because we used a bag of baby spinach.) Peel and very finely chop the onion and garlic.

In a skillet, melt 1 TBL butter and briefly saute onion and garlic. add the spinach and continue sauteing until it wilts. Stir every now and then, and turn up the heat if any liquid starts to collect. Leave the spinach to cool a bit.

Add the spinach mixture to the bread slices, along with the ricotta, half the parmesan, flour, and eggs and season everything with salt and pepper and nutmeg. Combine all the ingredients well by kneading with your hands, then leave the dumpling mixture to stand about 15 minutes.

In a large saucepan, bring plenty of salted water to a boil. Shape smallish dumplings, about the size of a ping pong ball, from the dumpling mix. Once all the dumplings are formed, slide them into the water, turning the heat to low. Cook the dumplings uncovered for about 15 minutes. The water should not boil, but only very gently bubble.

Just before the end of the cooking time, cut the remaining butter into large cubes and melt in a pan.

Lift the dumplings out of the pot with a slotted spoon, drain well and serve drizzled with butter and sprinkled with Parmesan. Enjoy!

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