Cafe Lula

I subscribe to two cooking magazines, Good Food and Olive, and every month I fold down the pages of recipes I like the look of and then happily put the magazines on my bookshelf and forget all about them. When I look through them again, there are always recipes I’ve marked which are a bit different to my normal tastes, and I’m fairly certain I will never make them. This is one of those recipes, and this week I decided I was just going to go for it. If I didn’t like it, I could just not make it again. But I did like it. A lot.

This is so simple, fresh tasting and actually rather pretty. The original recipe is vegetarian and I was tempted to leave it as such, but I couldn’t resist adding bacon. I’m sure, though, that it would be yummy without, so make this veggie if you want to 🙂

Gnocchi with mushrooms, spinach, bacon and poached egg

Adapted from Olive October 2011

Serves 2

Ingredients:

a little olive oil, for frying

15g butter

3 slices back bacon, sliced

250g chestnut mushrooms, sliced

1 garlic clove, crushed

100g baby spinach

black pepper, to season

250g gnocchi (I used bought fresh, 3-4 minutes cooking time)

2 large, very fresh eggs

Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan over a medium-high heat and add the bacon. Fry until cooked through and then add the black pepper, mushrooms, garlic and butter. Fry until the mushrooms have softened, then turn the heat to low and wilt the spinach in while you cook the gnocchi and eggs.

Fill two large pans with boiling water and add a pinch of salt to each. In one pan, pour in the gnocchi. In the other pan, poach the eggs. I used gnocchi which took 3-4 minutes to cook, which was just the right amount of time for the eggs.

My method for poaching eggs (which I learnt from my nan) is to use a slotted spoon and stir the water in the pan quite quickly until it creates a sort of whirlpool. Quickly break an egg into the middle of whirlpool. It should cling together and begin to cook immediately, at which point you can push it gently to the side and create the whirlpool again. Alternatively, poach them one at a time.

Once the gnocchi is cooked, drain it and toss it in the pan with the bacon, mushrooms and spinach. Divide between two plates and add a poached egg to the top of each. Serve immediately.