Ricotta Gnocchi à la Poêle

Tender on the inside and golden brown on the outside, this ricotta gnocchi à la poêle is a wonderful, protein-full dish, easily dressed up to suit any palate.

I’ve made gnocchi with polenta and with potatoes but the most tender kind of all is made with ricotta, which as a bonus, adds protein that the other two methods do not. 

If you think gnocchi must be boiled, let me introduce you to a method I first learned in France. Anything cooked à la poêle simply means it’s been pan-fried over a reasonably high flame. In other words, it’s been seared in a hot pan to protect the insides from drying out. 

Once the gnocchi are cooked, dress them with your favorite sauce or seasonings. Below I give the method, as per our idol Jacques Pépin, for gnocchi persillade, tossed with a mix of minced flat leaf parsley and fresh garlic. 

I don’t know that he ever made gnocchi persillade but I have made pan-fried frog legs adapted from his recipe, finished with parsley and garlic and they are divine. Perhaps I’ll share that recipe someday! 

Ricotta Gnocchi à la Poêle

This recipe makes enough to feed five or six people. Since we are not that many, I tried to freeze some in rolls wrapped in cling film but, once thawed, they needed way more flour to make them easy to roll out again and cut into pieces. Next time I will cook them all à la poêle before freezing them. I’m thinking that will work better. I’ll update this post when I do.

Ingredients

For the ricotta gnocchi:

8 ¾ oz or 250g ricotta, with any visible liquid poured off

2 cups or 250g 00 flour plus extra for rolling

1 large egg

For frying: 1 tablespoon olive oil

For the persillade:

2 cloves garlic

Several stems flat leaf parsley, leaves only

For adding the persillade:

1 tablespoon butter, divided

Method

In a large mixing bowl, mix together the ricotta, 1 cup or 125g of the flour and the egg and stir to combine. 

Knead the dough with your hands, adding flour until you have a smooth elastic dough that is soft but not sticky. You may not use it all. It all depends on the moisture in your ricotta. (For this batch I only used 1½ cups or 188g flour.)

Roll the dough into a ball and wrap in cling film. Refrigerate for 30 minutes. 

Separate the ball into 8 or so pieces. Working one at a time, roll out on a floured work surface into a long, even roll.

Use a knife to cut the roll into ½ in or 1 cm pieces. 

Press the pieces with a floured fork. 

Heat a non-stick frying pan over medium-high heat. When hot, drizzle in the olive oil. Add the gnocchi being careful not to crowd the pan. I only cooked two rolls for these photos and did it in two batches. 

Pan fry for about three minutes or until browned on the one side. 

Turn and pan fry for an additional 3-5 minutes on the other side. Remove to a plate and continue cooking the rest of the gnocchi in batches. 

Meanwhile, remove the parsley leaves from the stalks and mince the parsley and garlic cloves. 

To make the persillade, mix the minced parsley and garlic together. 

Once all the gnocchi are browned and you are ready to serve, put them all back into the hot pan. Add in the tablespoon of butter, separated into three.

As the butter is melting, add in the persillade aka the parsley garlic mix. 

Stir and pan fry for a few minutes to cook the garlic a bit, wilt the parsley and heat the ricotta gnocchi through. 

Spoon straight on to plates or into a serving dish and serve hot. 

Enjoy! 

Welcome to the 7th edition of Alphabet Challenge 2026, brought to you by the letter G. Many thanks to Wendy from A Day in the Life on the Farm for organizing and creating the challenge. Check out all the G recipes below:

• Cheesy Bacon Grits from Jolene’s Recipe Journal
• Chunky Garlic Stuffed Olive Deviled Eggs from Faith, Hope, Love, & Luck Survive Despite a Whiskered Accomplice
• Gochujang Garlic Flower from Magical Ingredients
• Gochujang Sugar Cookies from A Messy Kitchen
• Golden Diner Pancakes with Maple Honey Syrup from Karen’s Kitchen Stories
• Grilled Garlic Honey Boneless Wings from Blogghetti
• Ham, Cheese, and Spinach Packets from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Homemade Gluten Free Bread Flour from Sneha’s Recipe
• Kadai Aloo Gobi from Mayuri’s Jikoni 
• Ricotta Gnocchi à la Poêle from Food Lust People Love

Here are my posts for the 2026 alphabet challenge, thus far:

A: Ají de Cerdo aka Peruvian Pork Stew

B: Baby Cos Peach Salad with Blue Cheese Dressing 

C. Traditional Cullen Skink 

D. Coconut Cream Date Caramel 

E. Edamame Summer Salad 

F. Lamb Feta Mint Patties 

G. Ricotta Gnocchi à la Poêle - this post!

To check out the Alphabet Challenges for 2024 and 2025, click here.

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Cheater Pain aux Raisins #BreadBakers

Use ready-made puff pastry instead of the traditional laminated yeast dough to make these cheater pain aux raisins. They are more-ish and delicious! 

I’d have called these easy but I did have to make the pastry cream filling and even the apricot jam for the glaze since my local supermarket didn't have any. If you can somehow buy both of those, these would be a cinch! If you do need to make the pastry cream, I have a quick and easy recipe you can follow. Link in the ingredients list below. 

Years ago, back when our girls were young, we were living in Paris and there were many days when we needed a pre- or post-nap outing to break up the day. We'd walk down to the boulangerie on the far corner of our block. Then on to the nearby park to eat our snacks. As I mentioned before in my rosemary orange boule post, our younger daughter always chose a pain aux raisins for her treat. Nowadays she doesn't want raisins in things! Go figure.

Cheater Pain aux Raisins

For the puff pastry, I used the one from Trader Joe’s (18 oz, sadly seasonal but I alway buy extra to store in my freezer) because it is made with butter rather than shortening but if you can’t find that, the Pepperidge Farm (17 oz) brand would work too. Both brands come in a box with two sheets. 

Ingredients for 8

For pain aux raisins:

2 sheets puff pastry (see note above)

1 cup or 265g crème pâtissière aka vanilla pastry cream (This recipe.) 

½ cup or 70g golden raisins

For the egg wash:

1 egg

1 tablespoon milk

For the glaze: 

¼ cup or 70g apricot jam (store-bought or homemade)

1 tablespoon water

Method

Soak the raisins for 5 minutes in warm water. Drain and pat dry with paper towels. This also gives you an opportunity to pull off any small stems if you see them. Those tiny bugs on the right? My stem bits. 

Lay one sheet of puff pastry on a cutting board and spread half of the pastry cream evenly on the pastry sheet. Top the pastry with half of the golden raisins. 

Lay the other piece on pastry on top. Spread the rest of the pastry cream on top and sprinkle on the rest of the raisins. 

Roll the two pieces of pastry up together, forming a big log. 

Cover the log snuggly in cling film and chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. 

During the chilling time, preheat your oven to 375°F or 190°C and prepare a large baking pan by lining it with baking parchment or a silicone liner.

Use a sharp knife, unflavored dental floss or some fine fishing line to cut the log into eight even rolls. I used fishing line! Slide it under (you may have to lift the log) to the place you want to cut. Bring both ends up and put one piece under the other like you are starting to tie a shoe. Pull the ends and voilá, a clean cut. 

Transfer the pain aux raisins to your prepared pan and secure the ends with toothpicks. In retrospect, I should have stuck mine in deeper! 

 

Whisk the egg with the milk and brush each roll well with the mixture.

Bake the pastries until the pain aux raisins are golden brown in color, about 30-32 minutes, depending on your oven. If your oven doesn’t heat evenly, turn the pan around halfway through the baking time. 

Right before the pastries come out of the oven, microwave the apricot jam and water for 30 seconds in a small bowl to make a chunky glaze. Mix well.

When the pain aux raisins come out of the oven, brush them with the apricot glaze.

Allow them to slightly cool before eating. The bottoms are lovely and crunchy. I should have take a photo of them! 

The outsides of mine were much flakier than the middles but since I used all butter puff pastry, they were still rich and delicious. Perfect, in fact, with a cup of coffee in the morning or hot tea in the afternoon. 

Enjoy! 

It’s the second Tuesday of the month so that means it’s Bread Baker time! This month our theme is French breads! Many thanks to our host, Wendy from A Day in the Life on the Farm. Check out the links below. 

• The Wimpy Vegetarian: Black Olive and Herb Fougasse
• A Day in the Life on the Farm: Brioche 
• Food Lust People Love: Cheater Pain aux Raisins
• Karen's Kitchen Stories: La Couronne Lyonaise 
• Culinary Cam: Pain au Chocolat
• A Messy Kitchen: Pain Brié 
• Zesty South Indian Kitchen: Pain de campagne 
• Sneha's Recipe : Sourdough French Bread

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

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Crème Pâtissière- Vanilla Pastry Cream

Crème pâtissière or vanilla pastry cream is a cooked egg custard thickened with cornstarch in addition to egg. It can be used in a variety of recipes or eaten as is. If you ever watch The Great British Bake Off, they call this creme pat!

This pastry cream is an essential ingredient if you want to make the classic French treat, pain aux raisins. It is spread on the flattened dough which is then rolled up with raisins, sliced into spirals and baked till golden. I’ll be sharing my cheater version using store-bought puff pastry tomorrow.

It is also lovely used to top a pavlova before adding fruit to serve and is the typical filling for profiteroles. Or truly, you can eat it with a spoon.

Crème Pâtissière - Vanilla Pastry Cream

In France bakers would probably use vanilla sugar or vanilla paste in this recipe. If you have real vanilla extract or essence, that works just as nicely. 

Ingredients to make about 1 1/4 cups or 300ml

1 cup or 240ml milk

3 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons cornstarch (US) or cornflour (UK)

1 large egg

Pinch fine sea salt 

1 1/2 tablespoons butter, softened

1 1/2 teaspoons real vanilla extract

Method

Heat the milk over medium high heat and bring it to a simmer, till it just starts to steam. 

While heating the milk, place the sugar, cornstarch, egg and salt in a bowl. Whisk until you have a thick, smooth mixture. 

Place the bowl with the egg mixture on a towel or napkin (to prevent the bowl from slipping while whisking in the next step), and set aside until the milk just starts to steam. 

Slowly pour the hot milk in a thin stream into the egg mix, WHILE WHISKING CONSTANTLY to temper the egg mix. 

Pour it all back into the saucepan. 

Heat over a medium heat, while whisking vigorously until it starts to thicken. This should take about 1 – 2 minutes depending on the heat of your stove and size of your saucepan. Do not neglect whisking every part of the pan to make sure the mixture isn’t catching and lumps aren’t forming. 

Keep cooking and whisking until it’s really thick and a spoon pulled through the pastry cream leaves a gap that doesn’t refill. 

Remove from the heat and whisk in the butter and vanilla extract until they are completely mixed in.

Pour the pastry cream into a bowl and immediately cover the surface with plastic wrap, making sure the plastic wrap is touching the whole surface. This is to prevent a skin from forming on top. 

Pop the pastry cream in the refrigerator for a few hours, until completely chilled and set.

Use as needed or eat with a spoon.

Enjoy! 

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Escargots à la Bourguignonne

The classic French dish title, Escargots à la Bourguignonne, means snails with rich, fragrant garlic parsley butter, in this case, baked in a casserole dish. Yep, no need to stuff them in shells! This way is much, much easier and just as delicious!

This recipe is adapted from one by the late great Anthony Bourdain, from his book, Les Halles Cookbook: Strategies, Recipes, and Techniques of Classic Bistro Cooking, where he shares recipes from his French bistro in New York. 

In the introduction to the escargot recipe, he declared that in all of his (at the time) 28 years working in US restaurants, he had never seen a single restaurant serving fresh snails. To his knowledge even the best ones use canned escargots. 

Well, if they are good enough for Anthony Bourdain, they are certainly good enough for me. If you don’t have this cookbook, allow me to entice you to get a copy. The recipe for the mushroom soup alone is worth the price (so creamy and rich, with zero actual cream - and do NOT skip adding the little bit of sherry at the end - so good!) but my favorite part is all the snarky asides and personal commentary that accompany the recipes. Anthony Bourdain at his absolute finest. 

I was fortunate enough to get my copy as a gift from my daughters one Christmas so it’s a treasured book in more than one way. I highly recommend it if you are a fan of 1. Anthony Bourdain and/or 2. French cooking. I wanted to add an Amazon affiliate link but it looks like the book is out of print. The only available copies are so expensive, which is disappointing. See if you can borrow one from your library. 

Escargots à la Bourguignonne

This recipe will serve four for a generous appetizer or two little pigs for an absolutely super rich lunch. In a nod to adding something healthy if eating this as a whole meal, a fresh tomato salad with a simple vinaigrette goes nicely. Two cans of snails yields about 220g once they are drained and rinsed.

Ingredients

2  (7.5 oz or 200g) cans snails in brine, drained and rinsed

1 shallot or half a purple onion, minced

½ cup or 120ml dry white wine

1 head garlic, peeled and separated

1 ounce or 28g flat parsley leaves

1/2 cup or 113g butter

Salt and pepper

To serve:

1/2 long baguette, sliced in rounds

 

Method

In a small pot, combine the snails, shallot (or onion) and white wine and bring to a simmer. 

Cook for 15 minutes. Drain and set the snails aside. Anthony adds this comment, which made me laugh: “I know, I know—they’re ugly. But they’re good. Hang in there.”

In the food processor, combine the garlic and parsley and pulse until finely chopped. 

Add the butter and process until the mixture is a smooth, green paste. 

Season with a little salt and pepper.

Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C. 

Choose a baking dish where the snails will cover most of the bottom. Spoon the snails into it. Dollop the garlic parsley butter over the snails. 

Bake for about 15 minutes in your preheated oven or until the butter is melted and there is the slightest color on the snails. 

Remove from the oven and serve immediately with the sliced baguette. 

Enjoy! 

It's the first Wednesday of the month so my Foodie Extravaganza Foodie friends are sharing recipes again. This month our theme or main ingredient is garlic! Many thanks to our host, Radha of Magical Recipes. 

• A Day in the Life on the Farm: Garlic Ginger Chicken Nuggets
• Sneha’s Recipe: Garlic-Keto Paneer Steaks In Cafreal Masala
• Karen’s Kitchen Stories: Garlic and Chive Flower Buns
• Palatable Pastime: Roasted Garlic Sautéed Squash
• Food Lust People Love: Escargots à la Bourguignonne
• Magical Ingredients: Garlicky Pink Peppercorn Paneer

Foodie Extravaganza is where we celebrate obscure food holidays by cooking and baking together with the same ingredient or theme each month. Posting day is always the first Wednesday of each month. If you are a blogger and would like to join our group and blog along with us, come join our Facebook page Foodie Extravaganza. We would love to have you! If you're a spectator looking for delicious tid-bits check out our Foodie Extravaganza Pinterest Board.

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