Italian Ricotta Gnocchi with Pea Cream, Pecorino and Crispy Pancetta | Gnocchi di Ricotta con Crema di Piselli, Pecorino e Pancetta Croccante
A spring plate assembled from three Roman constants: sheep milk ricotta, cured pork and the first peas of the year. The dumplings carry no potato, so there is no boiling, no cooling and no ricing. They are mixed, shaped and cooked inside forty minutes.
Everything rests on how much whey leaves the cheese before you begin. A tub of ricotta can hold a fifth of its weight in liquid, and every gram of it has to be answered later with flour, the one ingredient that turns a ricotta gnocco heavy. Drain honestly and the dough takes a third of a cup of flour for a pound.
The pancetta is seasoning rather than protein. It goes in thin, renders slowly and arrives as brittle shards dropped at the last second, before plate steam reaches them. The rendered fat is never discarded: a spoonful returns to the pan when the gnocchi are dressed, and it carries most of the savour.
Yield: 4 servings. Drain: 4 to 12 hours. Prep: 45 minutes. Cook: 20 minutes. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: primo piatto. Region: Lazio, Rome and the Agro Pontino.
The Story
Rome measures spring in peas. From late March the carts in Campo de Fiori and the Testaccio market fill with pods from the Agro Pontino, the reclaimed marshland south of the city, and from the volcanic ground around Velletri and Lanuvio in the Castelli Romani. Those soils warm early and drain fast, which is why Lazio peas reach the city weeks ahead of the northern crop.
The pairing with cured pork is older than any written recipe. Piselli al guanciale, peas stewed slowly with pork, onion and almost no water, is a fixture of Roman home cooking, and peas sit at the centre of vignarola, the spring stew of artichokes, broad beans, peas and romaine lettuce that holds trattoria blackboards for about six weeks a year. In all of them pork fat is the cooking medium rather than a garnish, and that logic is respected here.
The ricotta closes the circle. Ricotta Romana carries a protected designation and is made from the whey left after Pecorino Romano, so the cheese in the dumplings and the cheese grated over them come from the same sheep on the same day. Recooking that whey was pure economy in the transhumance world of Lazio, and gnocchi bound from it turned a by product into a first course.
Ingredients
For the gnocchi
Sheep milk ricotta, ricotta romana if possible, 1 lb (450 g) weighed before draining
All purpose flour, 1/3 cup (45 g), plus more for the board
Egg yolk, large, 1
Grated Pecorino Romano, 1/3 cup (30 g)
Freshly grated nutmeg, 1 small pinch
Fine sea salt, 1/2 tsp (3 g)
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
For the pea cream
Shelled fresh peas, 2 cups (280 g), or frozen young peas
Spring onion, white part only, thinly sliced, 1
Unsalted butter, 2 tbsp (28 g)
Light vegetable stock or water, 3/4 cup (180 ml)
Fine sea salt, 1/2 tsp (3 g)
Ice water for chilling, 4 cups (950 ml)
For the pancetta
Pancetta tesa, sliced 1/16 inch (2 mm) thick, 3 oz (85 g)
Extra virgin olive oil, 1 tsp (5 ml)
For finishing
Grated Pecorino Romano, 1/4 cup (25 g)
Reserved pea cooking water, 1/2 cup (120 ml)
Whole blanched peas held back from the 2 cups above, 1/3 cup (50 g)
Mint leaves, small, 8
Extra virgin olive oil, a few drops per plate
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Preparation
Drain the ricotta and weigh what leaves it
Set the ricotta in a sieve lined with a double layer of cheesecloth over a bowl, cover it and refrigerate for 4 to 12 hours, then weigh it again. A pound that has given up 2 to 3 oz (55 to 85 g) of whey is ready. One that has lost almost nothing was pressed hard in the tub, and the dough will tell you. Never squeeze the cloth, since pressure pushes curd through the weave.
Mix the dough with the fewest possible turns
Break the drained cheese up with a fork until no lump is larger than a pea, then fold through the yolk, the Pecorino, the nutmeg, the salt and the pepper. Add the flour in two additions with a spatula and stop the moment no dry flour is visible. Correctly mixed, the dough slumps off a spoon and takes the print of a fingertip. It will feel wetter than any pasta dough, and that is right.
Boil one dumpling before you shape the batch
Roll a single walnut of dough, drop it into salted water at a bare simmer and lift it out thirty seconds after it surfaces. Cut it open. If it holds and tastes light, shape everything. If it falls apart, fold in 1 tablespoon more flour and test again. Three minutes here catches a wet batch before it becomes forty dumplings in a cloudy pot.
Shape on a generously floured board
Scrape out a quarter of the dough and roll it into a rope about 3/4 inch (2 cm) across, using your fingertips rather than your warmer palms. Cut pieces of the same width and set them on a floured tray in a single layer. Leave them plain: ridges from a gnocchi board tear a ricotta dumpling and do nothing for a cream this smooth.
Blanch the peas and stop them in ice water
Boil the peas in salted water for 90 seconds if fresh, 60 if frozen, then scoop them into ice water and reserve 1/2 cup (120 ml) of the cooking water. Chilling on contact fixes the green, because pea chlorophyll turns olive within minutes at heat and no blending brings it back. Hold back 1/3 cup (50 g) of whole peas for the finish.
Blend the cream hot and pass it through a sieve
Soften the spring onion in the butter over low heat for about 4 minutes without colour, add the drained peas and the stock and simmer for 2 minutes only. Blend at full speed until glossy, season, and push the purée through a fine mesh sieve with a ladle. The skins left behind in the sieve are the whole reason a home pea cream feels grainy while a restaurant one feels like silk.
Render the pancetta until it snaps
Lay the slices in a cold pan with the teaspoon of oil and bring the heat up slowly to medium. Slow rendering pulls the fat out before the meat sets, which gives a shard that breaks rather than bends. Turn once, lift them out at deep amber after 6 to 8 minutes and drain on paper. Keep the fat: 1 tablespoon returns to the pan later.
Cook the gnocchi and finish them in the pan
Salt a wide pan of water at about 1 tablespoon per 4 quarts (4 L) and hold it at a lazy simmer, never a rolling boil, which knocks soft dumplings apart. Slide in half the gnocchi, wait for them to rise and give them 45 seconds more. Lift them into a warm saute pan holding the reserved pancetta fat and 3 tablespoons of pea water, roll them for 30 seconds, take the pan off the heat and shower in the Pecorino.
Plating
Warm the plates to around 130°F (55°C) and no hotter. This dish reaches the table cooler than a pasta dish, because the pea cream loses its sweetness above roughly 150°F (65°C) and begins to taste cooked, yet a cold plate pulls it below pleasant within a minute.
Spoon 3 tablespoons of cream into the centre of each plate and spread it into a shallow disc rather than a swoosh. Set five or six gnocchi onto it, slightly apart so the green reads between them, and scatter the reserved whole peas into the gaps. The purée and the whole peas give the eye and the tooth two versions of the same ingredient.
Break the pancetta over the plate with your fingers as it leaves the pass, so the shards land in different sizes and none sits long enough to soften. Finish with a few drops of olive oil, a turn of black pepper and the mint leaves placed singly. Mint belongs to Roman pea cookery and is not decoration, but four leaves a plate is the limit.
Professional Technique
The governing technique is a flour budget. Every gram of water left in the ricotta demands roughly a gram and a half of flour to bind it, and flour is what makes these dumplings heavy, so draining is done to spend less later. Weighing turns that from instinct into a number: lose 12 to 18 percent of the starting weight and the 1/3 cup (45 g) in the list will be right.
The second technique is the arrest of the peas. Chlorophyll degrades to pheophytin under heat, and the shift from bright green to army olive is irreversible. Ninety seconds of boiling, an immediate plunge into ice water and a blend that never exceeds two further minutes of heat keep the pigment intact. Blending hot is deliberate too, since hot purées emulsify butter readily and pass through a sieve with a fraction of the effort.
The third is a mantecatura built on pork fat instead of butter. Rendered pancetta fat is nearly pure lipid and carries all the cured aroma that went into the pan, and shaken with a few tablespoons of starchy pea water it forms a thin emulsion that clings without weighing on the dumplings. The Pecorino goes in only off the heat, because sheep cheese proteins seize into strings on a hot pan and cannot be rescued.
Texture and Moisture Control
Four textures have to reach the table intact: dumplings that yield instantly, a cream that flows but does not run, whole peas that pop, and pancetta that shatters. Each fails on its own clock. The gnocchi go gummy with excess flour or waterlogged in a rolling boil, the cream thins if pea water is added carelessly and tightens as it cools, and the pancetta softens within two minutes of touching anything damp.
Moisture inside the dough keeps moving after mixing. Shaped gnocchi left more than about 40 minutes on the tray draw water back out of the ricotta, the flour underneath turns to paste and the bases stick. Either cook them inside that window or freeze them solid on the tray, which stops the migration entirely.
Judge the cream with a spoon before service: it should hold a shallow dent for a second and then relax. Loosen it with warm pea water rather than stock, which dilutes seasoning as well as body, and leave it a shade looser in the pan than you want it on the plate, since it thickens noticeably as the pan cools.
Professional Mise en Place
Everything except the boiling of the gnocchi can be done ahead, which is what makes this plate workable for service. The order below assumes the ricotta went into the cloth the night before.
Equipment and tools
Fine mesh sieve, cheesecloth and a scale that reads in grams
High speed blender and a second fine mesh sieve for the pea cream
Wide low pan for simmering and a slotted spoon
Heavy saute pan for the toss, cold pan for the pancetta
Prepared ahead
Ricotta draining 4 to 12 hours ahead, weighed both times
Pea cream blended and sieved up to 1 day ahead, cooled fast
Pancetta rendered on the day, its fat kept in a separate bowl
Gnocchi shaped up to 40 minutes ahead, or frozen solid on a floured tray
Service setup
Pea water held hot for adjusting the cream and the pan sauce
Pea cream warm over a low bain marie, covered, never allowed to boil
Grated Pecorino, mint and pepper mill at the pass
Plates warmed to around 130°F (55°C), no hotter
Chef Tips
Buy ricotta from a counter that sells it in perforated baskets rather than sealed tubs. Basket ricotta has been draining since it was made and often loses only 5 percent more in your cloth, which means less flour, lighter dumplings and a shorter wait.
If you can only find frozen peas, use them without apology. They are blanched within hours of picking and are frequently sweeter than fresh pods that have travelled for three days, since pea sugar turns to starch quickly after harvest. Cut the blanching to 60 seconds.
Keep the whey you drained off. It is lightly sweet and faintly acidic, and it cooks the peas better than plain water or stock, tying the two halves of the plate together. Use it within two days and bring it to the boil before the peas go in.
Freeze the shaped gnocchi in a single layer for 2 hours, then bag them. They cook straight from frozen with about 30 seconds added and hold their shape better than fresh ones, which makes a frozen tray the safer option for more than four people.
Common Mistakes
Skipping the draining step. Wet ricotta forces flour into the dough until it behaves, and by then the dumplings are pasty. Four hours in a cloth solves it, and the scale says when.
Kneading the dough. This is not pasta and gluten is the enemy. Fold the flour in with a spatula, stop the moment it disappears and accept a dough that feels too soft. Every extra turn tightens the gnocco.
Boiling rather than simmering. A rolling boil tears soft dumplings apart and clouds the water with loose flour that coats everything else. Hold the surface at a lazy shiver and cook in two batches.
Adding the Pecorino over direct heat. Sheep cheese lacks the free fat that helps Parmigiano melt smoothly, and on a hot pan it seizes into rubbery threads. Pull the pan off the flame, wait a few seconds, then shower it in while tossing.
Blending the peas without sieving them. Pea skins survive any blade, and an unsieved cream feels sandy against dumplings this smooth. Two minutes with a ladle and a fine mesh sieve change the dish more than any other step.
Wine Pairing
Frascati Superiore DOCG: The bottle from the same volcanic hills that grow the peas, and the most honest match here. Modern Frascati built on Malvasia del Lazio and Trebbiano is dry and taut, with white peach fruit and a mineral bite from the tufo, and that acidity is aimed straight at the salt of Pecorino Romano and the fat of the pancetta.
Orvieto Classico DOC: Taken in the dry version, this is Grechetto and Procanico from volcanic and clay soils just north of Lazio. It gives white flowers, green almond and a faintly bitter finish that runs alongside the mint rather than fighting it. Quieter than the Frascati, which helps when the plate already carries pea sweetness and a cured edge.
Trento DOC: A mountain metodo classico, Chardonnay led, aged on its lees in the Dolomites. Bubble and high acidity scrub pork fat off the palate between mouthfuls, while the bready autolytic note picks up the sheep milk. Serve it brut at 46°F (8°C), in a white wine glass rather than a flute.
Collio Friulano DOC: Friulano from the marl and sandstone of the Collio is dry, broad in the mouth and finishes on bitter almond. That breadth is the point: it meets the buttery pea cream on equal terms where a lean white would vanish, and the almond lands cleanly against the nutmeg in the dough. A bottle with a year of age suits this best.
Cesanese del Piglio DOCG: The red for anyone who wants one, and the only serious red in Lazio. Serve it young and unoaked at around 57°F (14°C). Its red cherry fruit, soft tannin and dry herbal lift are pitched at the pancetta, and the cool temperature keeps it from flattening the peas. It is what would be poured in the Ciociaria hills.
Storage & Reheating
Assembled plates do not keep, so store the parts. The pea cream holds in an airtight container in the refrigerator for 2 days and freezes for 1 month, though it wants a short blitz in the blender after thawing. Rendered pancetta fat keeps refrigerated for 2 weeks in a sealed jar, while crisp pancetta is best the day it is made.
Raw shaped gnocchi keep 3 months frozen and should never be refrigerated raw, because flour and cheese go on exchanging water and by the next day the tray is one sticky mass. Freeze them separated for 2 hours, bag them, and drop them into simmering water straight from the freezer with 30 seconds added.
Cooked leftovers keep 1 day refrigerated, with cream and dumplings in separate containers. Rewarm the cream over a bain marie and loosen it with hot water, then warm the gnocchi for a minute in a covered saute pan with a spoonful of water over low heat. Never microwave them and never return them to boiling water, which turns a cooked ricotta dumpling to porridge.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 4 portions:
Calories: 520 kcal
Total Fat: 31 g
Saturated Fat: 16 g
Trans Fat: 0 g
Unsaturated Fat: 13 g
Cholesterol: 130 mg
Sodium: 790 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 30 g
Fiber: 5 g
Total Sugars: 7 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 27 g
Lactose: 3 g
Principal micronutrients: calcium, phosphorus, vitamin A, vitamin K, folate, vitamin B12, zinc
These figures are estimates. Sodium is the least predictable line, since Pecorino Romano and pancetta are both heavily salted and brands vary widely.
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