I’ve been unemployed for over a year ’cause the multi-billion dollar company I long worked for didn’t renew my contract. They told me that “unfortunately” due to covid-19 they’re not hiring at the moment. Although I don’t have much money left, I still want to impress my girlfriend with some fancy salmon, so we went to the nearest Lidl and got the deluxe salmon gnocchi!

After cooking them with a little bit of ricotta for the first time, I realized they didn’t really taste of salmon at all. To be honest, I didn’t read the back of the packaging where it said there was just 6% of salmon paste inside those gnocchi, but I thought that if I had to cook them nicely, I had to spice them up and add mushrooms, veggies and cheeses.

I decided to cook the remaining gnocchi with frozen Freshona mushrooms, added two types of bluecheese (spicy and sweet) put some bietola, and stay true to the sicilian saying ” I maccarruni su chiddi ca l’inchiunu a panza”.

Anyway, the cooking was simple.
Turn on the flame and melt butter on the pan.
Just defrost the mushrooms under warm water if they’re frozen as block, start to cook them under a lid, in the meanwhile cut the bietola and put the maccheroni pasta in the pot if the water is already boiling.
Let the bietola and mushrooms cook together for 4-5 minutes, then put as much bluecheese as you want on it, cut another tiny bit of butter and add a half a mestolo of cooked water to the saucepan.

Don’t forget the gnocchi gotta stay in boiling water for 1 minute. Take them out afterwards and slice them in half if you’re cooking the same ones I got fooled with, and put them in the saucepan.
Once the maccheroni are al dente, put them in the saucepan too, add some parmisan if you have it, then let it cook on medium flame if there’s a lot of water yet to be absorbed, then low flame for a couple more minutes, turn it off now and let it settle..
Crack some nuts if you’re vegetarian, need protein, or you just wanna keep it crispy.

If you followed all the steps it should look something like this..