Brown Butter Sage Gnocchi with Mushrooms and Goats Cheese

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This recipe is our attempt to recreate a delicious Gnocchi dish we recently ate at a famous restaurant in Sydney, Australia. The dish is a beautiful Brown Butter Sage Gnocchi with Mushrooms and Goats Cheese. The restaurant who created this dish is called Franca. Anyone in Sydney, we’d recommend checking it out! For the rest of you not in Sydney, we’ve tried our best to recreate this wonderful recipe here so you can all enjoy!

The combination of deep and unique flavors is what makes this Gnocchi dish so memorable. There is just so much going on with the plate! You’ve got the richness from beautiful, tender Brown Butter Gnocchi which has been pan seared to perfection. Earthy notes from the wild Mushrooms. Vibrancy brought to you by the fresh Sage, and a tangy, tartness from the Goats Cheese!

This wonderful arrangement of ingredients is so harmonious on the plate, making for a delicious meal. It’s great either as an appetizer or a main course, just dial up or down the quantities accordingly

How to make Brown Butter Sage Gnocchi with Mushrooms and Goats Cheese recipe

The star of the dish is the Gnocchi. Thankfully, it’s so easy to make. You simply add equal parts Mashed Potatoes with Flour along with some Egg Yolk to bind everything together. Mix it well to form a dough, which can be rolled out then cut into Gnocchi shapes

Cook the Gnocchi along with the Mushrooms then serve them with a generous portion of creamy Goats Cheese and you’ve got yourself a phenomenal dish!

Twice cook the Gnocchi for the best flavor and texture

In our opinion the best way to eat Gnocchi is Pan Fried. The texture pan frying Gnocchi creates is unbelievable. You have the beautiful tenderness of the Gnocchi which is cooked in boiling water. The Gnocchi is then crisped up on the outside by pan frying it in a Sage Butter Sauce. You’re not only getting an amazing texture by cooking the Gnocchi this way, but the flavor the Sage Butter adds to the Gnocchi is immense!

Sage is a powerful herb that infuses so much flavor into the Butter

Sage is a beautiful tasting herb, adding so much flavor to this dish. It is, however, a very powerful herb. Probably one of the most powerful herbs you can use in cooking! So, you don’t need a lot to add that beautiful flavor to your Butter

Once the butter has melted in your frying pan, add a couple of Sage leaves and it will infuse its flavor into the Butter. We wouldn’t recommend adding much more than a few leaves at a time. You don’t need much to flavor the Butter. Also, retain the cooked Sage leaves as a beautiful and tasty garnish to finish the dish

Any mushrooms will do for this recipe; however, we recommend trying a few varieties for different flavors and textures

Mushrooms bring a lovely earthiness to this dish and are a fantastic pairing with the Gnocchi and Goats Cheese. Different Mushrooms bring contrasting flavors to the dish, but they’re all good in our opinion so we recommend choosing Mushrooms that you enjoy the flavor of in this dish

For our version of this recipe, we’ve used a combination of typical Wild Mushrooms. We used Enoki, Oyster, and Shiitake Mushrooms. The combination of the thin, chewy Enoki Mushrooms with the meatier Oyster and Shiitake makes for some great contrasting textures in the dish

Depending on what Mushrooms are available at your local grocery store and what is in season may dictate what you will use in your dish. Other great Mushroom types we recommend trying are Chanterelle, Morel, and Portobello. Try a few different types of Mushrooms out and see which you like the best in this dish

There is naturally quite a lot of Butter used in this dish and as you all know, Butter is Mushrooms best friend! The Mushrooms will drink up all that wonderful Butter which will flavor them immensely. Once these tasty Mushrooms are paired with the Brown Butter Sage Gnocchi, the flavor is amazing!

This recipe is enough for 4 people as an appetizer, or two people as a main course serving

The Brown Butter Sage Gnocchi is a filling dish, so can be served as either an appetizer or as the main course. Just scale up or down the quantities per serving depending on the meal type. We’d recommend about 6-7 pieces of Gnocchi each for an appetizer, plenty more for the main course

It’s a great starter dish to a meal and really sets the tone for flavor if you’re trying to impress for a fancy dinner at home. There’s plenty of great main courses you can serve this recipe with which will work great. You can check out all our main courses in our Dinner section here. Here are a few of our recommended dishes that will taste great with this Brown Butter Sage Gnocchi with Mushrooms and Goats Cheese:

• Filet au Poivre
• Ribeye Steak Dinner with Asparagus and Mash
• Pork Chop Milanese with Parmesan Crust
• Cast Iron Creamy Chicken with Mushrooms
  
  

Gnocchi aficionados will tell you to only use a certain type of Potato..

Honestly, this is home cooking, and Gnocchi tastes great no matter what Potatoes you use. Some will say to get the best texture for your Gnocchi’s to only use Waxy Potatoes which are high in moisture. Honestly, use whatever Potatoes you feel like, and you’ll get a great result! The type of Potato you use won’t impact the Gnocchi in such a way that the dish will either be great or ruined. Any type of Potato will still yield you a great result

Potato types matter most when you’re looking to achieve a good level of crispiness. As we’ve found in our Homemade French Fries recipe, the type of Potato you use matters a great deal. For Gnocchi however, not so much!

We do recommend cooking the Potatoes whole, and with their skins on. This is primarily so the shape of the Potato remains intact as they’re cooking. We’re cooking the Potatoes through 100% when boiling them, so you want to avoid the Potatoes beginning to break up in the water. Hence, keeping the skins on then peeling them off once cooled

Brown Butter Sage Gnocchi with Mushrooms and Goats Cheese Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 lb. Potatoes, skin on
• 1 cup All Purpose Flour
• 100g Unsalted Butter
• 1 Egg Yolk
• 10 fresh Sage Leaves
• 4 tbsp. Goats Cheese
• 2 cups Wild Mushrooms (eg: Enoki, Oyster, Trumpet, Shiitake)
• Juice of ½ a Lemon
• Salt and Pepper
  
  

Instructions

1. Place the Potatoes into a large pot filled with water and a lot of Salt (2 tbsp. or so). Turn the heat on high and boil the Potatoes until fully cooked and tender throughout. This should take about 15 – 20 minutes
2. Once boiled, set the Potatoes aside to cool. Once the Potatoes have cooled, peel the skin then place in a large bowl and Mash to a smooth consistency. Add the Egg Yolk and mix through with your hands
3. Gradually add the flour, about 100g at a time and mix into the Potato mixture. Continue to mix until all the Flour has mixed through, and you’ve formed a dough that is smooth enough to roll out
4. Place ¼ of the dough on a floured surface and roll out to form a long tube about 1 inch thick. Repeat the process for the remaining dough, then cut the dough into 1-inch-thick pieces to form the Gnocchi
5. Press your finger into the Gnocchi gently to form an indentation to give the Gnocchi it’s unique shape, then allow to rest for 20 minutes before cooking
   
   

Cooking the Gnocchi

6. Cook the Gnocchi by placing them into a large pot of water with 2 tbsp. of Salt. Once the Gnocchi floats to the surface, remove them and place in a strainer. It’s best to do this in batches to not overload the pot
7. Add 25g of Butter into a large frying pan over medium high heat along with 2 Sage leaves. Once melted, add the Mushrooms and season well with Salt. Cook for 5 minutes, turning occasionally until the Mushrooms caramelize. Set aside
8. Add another 25g of Butter to the pan along with 2 more Sage Leaves. Add about a third of the Gnocchi and pan fry for 2 minutes. Flip the Gnocchi, add another 25g of Butter, 2 more Sage leaves and a sprinkle of Salt. Pan fry for a further 2 minutes until both sides are golden-brown
9. Repeat the process with the remaining Gnocchi, Butter, and Sage leaves until the desired amount of Gnocchi has been cooked
10. To plate: Add 1 tbsp. of Goats Cheese to a plate. Place the Gnocchi on top along with the Mushrooms. Finish with a few of the cooked Sage Leaves, a squeeze of Lemon Juice, about 1 tsp. of the Pan Butter, and a sprinkling of Finishing Salt. Serve immediately
    
    

Recipe Notes

We recommend only cooking the amount of Gnocchi you plan to eat. You can freeze the Gnocchi dough you don’t use and cook it later. The frozen Gnocchi will take longer to boil, otherwise you can follow the same instructions as above to cook them

Thank you for checking out this delicious Brown Butter Sage Gnocchi with Mushrooms and Goats Cheese recipe. If you enjoyed making this dish, why not give us a comment below and let us know how it went?

Happy Cooking!