This recipe is one of my favorite gnocchi dishes. It is a variant of a gnocchi and beans soup my mother in laws prepared for us a few summers ago to which I added the shrimps in pesto sauce.

Ingredients:

2 Packages of Gnocchi (I used the small ones for this recipe)

3 cups of small Shrimps

Half cup  fresh Pesto (homemade would be best, but if you are in a hurry one or two tablespoons of the pesto paste will work)

2 cans of black beans

2/3 Garlic cloves

hot pepper (if you like)

Extra virgin olive oil (don’t ask how much I used—you don’t want to know)

How to prepare this gnocchi delight:

Sauté one garlic cloves with some evoo, add the hot pepper, then the shrimps. Salt them and let them cook for a minute—or until needed. Remove the shrimps from the heat, keep the sauce they generated, and season them with the pesto. Then sauté the remaining garlic cloves with some evoo, pour the drained beans in the pan, check the salt, and cook them for several minutes. Meanwhile, cook the gnocchi as instructed. When they are ready, keep at least 2 cups of the cooking water, and pour the gnocchi and the cooking water in the pan where you cooked the beans. Add the shrimps as well and carefully stir them until the starch from the gnocchi transforms the liquids into a cream. Depending on your tastes, you can add more or less liquid to make the gnocchi more or less soupy. Buon appetito!