Give us the list of ingredients....and I'll bet someone will come up with a recipe.
And describe it....was there pieces of spinach in the gnocci? Or was it uniformly green like spinach pasta....or perhaps was it plain gnocci served with spinach with garlic, olive oil and cheese?
At any rate is sounde worth persueing!!
Linda C

I couldn't tell, Linda! She was sitting all the way at the other end of a table for 9. But I could hear the oohing and ahhing. I do know that it wasn't plain gnocchi with spinach sauce; it had spinach in the dough.

Most recipes seem to start with potatoes, ricotta cheese, and spinach. Does that help?

Gnocchi is made from either potatoes or ricotta in my experience, not both. Potato gnocchi is by far the most popular. I once made a ricotta gnocchi with spinach which was very good. I don't have the recipe book I used but I found this recipe on About.com and it is like what I made:

RICOTTA/SPINACH GNOCCHI

There are many different kinds of gnocchi in addition to the now standard potato variety. Pin, from Piacenza, combine greens with ricotta and Parmigiano. To serve 6:

INGREDIENTS:
1 1/8 pounds (500 g) greens or beet greens
A medium onion, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tablespoon minced parsley
3 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup - 2 tablespoons (70 g) unsalted butter
1/2 cup bread crumbs
1 1/2 cups freshly grated Parmigiano
4/5 pound (350 g) ricotta
2 eggs

PREPARATION:
Wash the greens, pick them over and discard the toughest ribs, then boil them for a couple of minutes in abundant salted water, drain them (you can if you want reserve this water for later), squeeze them dry, and chop them coarsely.

In a skillet, sauté the garlic, onion and parsley in 2 tablespoons of butter and the oil until the onion turns translucent, then stir in the greens. Cook for a few minutes more, then transfer the greens mixture to a large bowl and stir in the bread crumbs and grated cheese. Next incorporate the ricotta , bind everything with the eggs, and mix thoroughly.

Make gnocchi 3/4 of an inch long and half that in width, taking a pinch of the mixture at a time and rolling it between your hands to give it a spindle shape with pointy ends, and rolling the finished gnocchi in flour. While you are working bring salted water to a boil and melt the remaining butter. Boil the gnocchi in the water, skimming them off the pot as soon as they rise to the surface, and serve them with the melted butter. I might also have more grated cheese at table for those who want it. And a bottle of a white from the Colli Piacentini.

My favorite gnocchi, which I ate in Florence, Italy and then made at home is potato gnocchi with truffle oil and pecorino cheese. It is simply a regular potato gnocchi with grated pecorino added and dressed with olive oil and just a little white truffle oil. It's awfully good. But then, so was the ricotta/spinach gnocchi.

Thanks!

You know, jimster's comment that gnocchi are made either with potato or ricotta, not both, and the ingredients in his recipe as well as others I'd seen reminded me of "malfatti," one of the first dinners I ever knew how to cook. (My senior year in college, six girls shared an apartment and our meager cooking knowledge, eating family-style every night and taking turns cooking. Thirty years later, we all still make each other's family recipes.) And lo and behold, my recipe is similar.

But if anyone has a recipe for potato gnocchi with spinach, I'd like to have it, because maybe that's what she had.

Anyway, I googled "malfatti," and sure enough, at least one of the recipes says "Malfatti (spinach gnocchi)." One source (Accidental Hedonist) wrote,
"This is another Lombardy recipe, and they are one of the few regions in Italy where they aren't all that fond of pasta. So leave it to these folks to create a ravioli dish, minus the pasta. In the end, these are spinach and ricotta cheese dumplings, but oh..my..god..are they good."

Although I made the malfatti bigger (about link sausage size) than I picture gnocchi, I guess it's pretty much the same thing -- I haven't made it in so many years, my daughter just doesn't remember it. But I'll try it for her now.

Here is my recipe:

Apt. 5 Malfatti

1 c chopped spinach (defrosted frozen; squeeze dry in towel)
1 1/2 c ricotta (15 oz)
1/4 c grated Parmesan
1 t dried basil
1 clove garlic, minced
1 c fine, dry breadcrumbs
2 eggs, beaten
1/4 c minced scallions
1/2 t nutmeg
flour

Mix everything, refrigerate 1 hr. Roll into 3" fingers; roll lightly in flour. Place in single layer in fridge until ready to cook. Bring 2" salted water to a boil. Slide in malfatti 1 at a time. They float to the top when done (3-5 min.) Remove and drain. Serve with sauce.

This is not my recipe but when you called it Malfatti I recognized it as a dish I have had in one of my favourite Italian restaurants in Toronto. It's delicious.

Luckily I found it on line!

Malfatti Spinach Gnocchi
by Alida Solomon, executive chef and owner of Tutti Matti

This recipe was featured on House & Home Television 2004

1 1/2 lb (750 g) trimmed, washed and drained spinach leaves
8 oz (250 g) very fresh, drained ricotta
2 eggs
Scant 1 cup (100 g) freshly grated parmesan cheese
Dash of grated nutmeg (optional)
Salt to taste
Freshly ground black pepper
About 1 cup (125 g) all-purpose flour
1/4 cup (60 g) butter*
4 fresh sage leaves*

* for the sauce

Step 1. Bring a large saucepan salted water to a boil. Add the spinach and cook for 10 minutes. Drain well, squeeze out excess moisture, and chop finely.

Step 2. Put the spinach in a large mixing bowl and add the ricotta cheese, the egg and extra yolk, half the parmesan, the nutmeg, if using, and salt and pepper. Combine these ingredients very thoroughly with a fork until smooth.

Step 3. Use a dessert spoon or tablespoon to shape little oval dumplings of the mixture, or roll into small balls between your floured palms, and then press to flatten slightly. Coat lightly with flour all over.

Step 4. Place the butter and sage leaves in a small saucepan and warm gently to melt the butter. Turn off the heat and leave to stand.

Step 5. Bring a very large saucepan of salted water to a gently boil. Add a few drops of olive oil to prevent the dumplings form sticking to one another and then add the dumplings. They should simmer rather than boil. When they bob up to the surface, remove with a slotted spoon. Drain well and place in a heated serving dish. Drizzle with the sage-flavoured butter.

Step 6. Sprinkle with the remaining parmesan cheese and serve at once.

Serves 4

Suggested wine: a young, dry red like Rosso di Montalcino

That recipe is better than the one I found, Chase. I will use it in the future.

One tip: the cooking water should be boiling VERY gently. The gnocchi are tender and will disintegrate if it is boiling hard.

Thanks, chase.

Here's another tip for anyone who hasn't learned this by annoying experience already: the spinach needs to be squeezed quite dry, or the malfatti fall apart. Do this in towels, but NOT paper towels, because the spinach sticks like mad and it's hard to salvage it without including shreds of wet paper. Use a clean tea towel instead. Put the spinach in and wring the whole thing out over the sink. It's easy to brush off the clinging spinach bits from the tea towel.

Gellchom,
I love and use the one from Marcella Hazan, Essentials of Italian Cooking. It's very close to the one Chase provided:

Spinach and Ricotta Gnocchi

1 pound fresh, cleaned spinach or 1 ten-ounce pkg. frozen
2 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp onion, chopped very fine
2 Tbsp finely chopped prosciutto [If I don't have it, I don't use it]
salt
3/4 cup fresh ricotta
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano
Nutmeg, freshly grated

1. Cook the spinach with salt in boiling water until tender. [I usually steam the spinach so there's less water to drain]. Drain it, and as soon as it is cool enough to handle, squeeze it gently to get out as much moisture as possible, chop it rather coarse.

2. Put the butter and onion in a small skillet, and turn the heat on to medium. Cook and stir onion util it's pale gold. Add the prosciutto. Cook and stir for a few seconds more just to coat the meat.

3. Add the spinach, cook for a minute or 2 more.

4. Place spinach mixture in a bowl. When cooled down to room temperature, add the ricotta and flour, and mix well. Add the egg yolks, grated Parmesan, and grating of nutmeg. Add salt if necessary.

5. Make small pellets, shaping them quickly by rolling them in the palm of your hand, 1/2 - 3/4-in. The smaller the better, because they cook more quickly and the sauce is distributed more evenly. If the mixture sticks to your palm, dust your hands lightly with flour. [I usually make them about 3/4-in.... don't have the patience for making them so small!]

6. Drop the gnocchi, a few at a time, into 4-5 quarts of boiling, salted water. When the water returns to a boil, cook for 3-4 minutes then retrieve them with a slotted spoon and transfer to a warm serving platter. Spread over some of the sauce. Repeat until all the gnocchi are done, pour the rest of the sauce over them. Serve at once with grated Parmesan on the side.

For the sauce, I also have used the butter and sage sauce, or a pureed tomato sauce with cream.

These are very fragile and break apart easily, so I don't really toss them in the sauce, mostly just drizzle it over.

The better you drain the spinach and the ricotta, the easier they are to work with.

Don't over handle them when you're forming the gnocchi or add too much flour to your hands or they start getting a tad gummy/rubbery.

The best time I made it was when there were two of us working. One to immediately roll the gnocchi and drop them bit by bit into the boiling water, and the other scoop them out as soon as their bobbing about.

Well, the malfatti were good, as always, but she says they are not what she had at that Italian restaurant in Mexico. They were what lindac describes: "uniformly green like spinach pasta." And I think they were potato gnocchi.

Can anyone help?

Thanks!

I would contact this lady Ilva in Tuscany, Italy... she has been making gnocchi for years and years. Even if she doesn't have a recipe, she can probably write one for you.

Here is a link that might be useful: Ilva in Tuscany