Spinach & Ricotta Gnocchi - served with sticky wings

First of all you will need to blanch the spinach in boiling water for about 1 minute until it is gorgeously bright green in colour. Then drain it WELL and chop it.

Place all the ingredients into a mixing bowl and mix them WELL! Once that is done, your can grab a large board or clear a large, clean working surface and flour it. Take out fistful sizes of the mixture, and roll them out on the floured surface into long ropes. Make sure to compress them nicely, otherwise they will break apart later...

Once they are rolled nicely, you can then cut the rope into 2cm pieces. You will then need to heat a deep pan or pot with water and once the water has reached a gentle boil, gently place each piece of gnocchi into the water. Initially they will sink and once they rise they are done and can be removed from the water. This normally takes about 2 - 3 minutes. Do not over crowd the water, rather do them in batches.

Once they are done you can place them on a greased baking tray, coat them with a little beaten egg or milk and then grill them in the oven until nice and golden on the top. That's it, you are done!

As I mentioned in the beginning, the reason reason I decided to do these in the first place was because of our finger food dinner and the main was the sticky chicken wings. I find that meat these days is so pumped full of water/brine that if you put chicken into the oven it actually boils first... so when I make chicken wings, I always cook them as is for about 30 minutes first just to get rid of the liquid which you can just drain from the oven tray.

Once that is done, then I add the marinade and pop them back into the oven to cook until they are deliciously golden and sticky looking! In this particular instance I used a sticky marinade and a Mediterranean glaze.

I generally toss them throughout the cooking process adding a little more of the marinade combo each time, this way they get wonderfully sticky and crispy all round.

Everything on the plate needs to be easy to eat without cutlery, so I served both of the above on a bed of fresh baby spinach leaves and a few rainbow baby tomatoes. Although the gnocchi takes a little extra time to prepare, there really isn't much else to do, aside from the chicken wings which is as simple as pie, so it is totally worth the effort and the result is a super Summer dinner!