Do you want to hear the story of how my husband and I ended up eating Plum & Brown Butter Gnocchi on our deck last night? It’s a good one.
It kind of started when I was sitting at the kitchen table, brainstorming meal ideas for the coming school year, in a sleep-deprived haze, and the only thing I managed to write down was:
It surfaced from a memory of meeting up with my best friend, Megan, for an overnight in Boston. So I guess this story really starts two years ago, when she and I went to No. 9 Park , the Beacon Hill restaurant run by Barbara Lynch. We love to meet up for 24-hour visits, sleep in a big hotel bed, and find the best restaurants to try. And so the first time we went to No. 9 Park, we ordered a tasting menu with 5 courses. The second course was plum gnocchi with brown butter.
I am not kidding you, it was so good we cried.
We felt like in the middle of our hectic and stressful lives, the universe had reached out and handed us comfort on a plate. A soft, fresh pasta pillow stuffed with a sweet plum filling, in the richest, simplest butter sauce. Salty and sweet, soft and velvety. Best. Food Memory. Ever.
Fast forward a year later, and our other college friend Shannon from San Francisco joined us in Boston. We pretended to debate where we would eat, then took her directly to No. 9 Park to get the Plum Gnocchi. We hoped it was still on the menu, and that it was as good as it was in our memories. When we sat down and read the menu, we found that it was still on there with one slight alteration. It was now served with a slice of fois gras. How do you improve upon the best thing you have ever eaten? Apparently with a slice of fois gras. When we tasted it, we cried again.
So in my sleepy state of food planning, I was thinking about how I am meeting up again for a crazy 28 hours with my girlfriends at Foxwoods in Connecticut. First trip sans baby, and I am of course blessing my husband for watching the kids. When this meal showed up on paper, I looked through my pantry and found this:
I had a bag of frozen potato gnocchi in the freezer. So I boiled it, melted 2-3 T. butter and added the plum paste, then I tossed them all together:
The carmel-plum sauce is SO delicious! I recently learned from my Polish friend (when I told him the story of the meal that made us cry) that the combination of Plum and Gnocci is very Eastern European, and they had it often growing up in Poland. I am getting my passport ready because I need to go to the land where this was invented.
So to thank my husband in advance, I made him some Plum Gnocchi heaven. Needless to say, this meal is super easy – three ingredients, under 10 minutes. We added goat cheese and sage to cut the sweetness, and they were both amazing additions. You could sprinkle blue cheese on top as well.
Next time I make it, I am thinking about adding the fois gras.
Plum & Brown Butter Gnocchi
1 package frozen potato gnoccchi
2-3 T. butter
1 package of plum preserve, or about 4 oz. of plum jam.
Cook gnocchi according to package directions. Melt butter in large pan, then melt plum preserves into butter. Add gnocchi when it is floating on top of the water. Sprinkle with a pinch of salt, and serve with crumbled goat cheese and sage.
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