Priest-killer with melted butter and Parmesan

Ingredients for 4 servings:

• 500 g leaf spinach (fresh)
• 2 shallots
• 6 sage leaves
• 100 g Parmesan or mountain cheese
• 250 g white bread, stale without crust
• 2 eggs
• 100 ml milk, warm
• 1 tbsp butter
• some flour
• nutmeg
• salt and pepper

Instructions

Working time approx. 30 minutes; Rest time approx. 1 hour; Total time approx. 1 hour 30 minutes

Dice the white bread and soak in lukewarm milk for at least 1 hour. Trim the spinach and blanch briefly in salted water, rinse, drain, squeeze dry, and finely chop. Finely dice the shallots and sauté in a little butter. Add the spinach, sauté briefly, and remove the pan from the heat. Squeeze dry the bread and add it to the spinach and shallot mixture along with the eggs and a little flour. Knead everything well and season generously with salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Scoop out small dumplings or gnocchi (using 2 teaspoons) and simmer gently in boiling salted water for about 5 minutes. (Boil one or two test dumplings beforehand. If they fall apart, add a little more flour; if they’re too firm, add a little more milk. Keep the dumplings warm in a preheated bowl. Foam the remaining butter, add the sage leaves, and fry. Pour this mixture over the Strangolapreti, sprinkle with coarsely grated cheese. Done! The dumplings taste good either simply with butter and a spicy cheese, as here, or with a simple tomato sauce, or as a side dish to ragùs, etc. Another tip: Although garlic goes well with spinach, it’s rather distracting here because of the cheese. So, it’s best to leave out the garlic in this recipe… even if it’s difficult. The original name for the dumplings is Strangolapreti. It originally comes from Trento, where these dumplings were a favorite dish of the prelates – that’s how the name “priest-killer” came about, so it’s said.