The name refers to the image of priests who, as popular satire states, could have choked themselves by voraciously eating these gnocchi, which are more difficult to swallow than those made with potatoes. The dough for strangolapreti is indeed robust, composed of bread, spinach, eggs and cheese. It’s a traditional dish from Trentino, whereas in most of central Italy strangolapreti implies a fairly large pasta format topped with a stew sauce. Once in the valleys of Trentino they were prepared with millet bread soaked in milk. In the province of Naples strangolapreti was a poor person’s soup by adding gnocchi to a vegetable broth.
Not just Spinach
Strangolapreti in Trentino are made with spinach, but there are also many other versions prepared with beet tops, kale, chard, or wild plants such as dandelion (taraxacum). Practically every green leafy vegetable is perfect to make this recipe and it’s precisely for this reason that the dish can be made at different times of the year.
Strangolapreti Recipe
Ingredients
2 lb cleaned and boiled spinach, 7 oz stale bread of the type you prefer (black, white, wholemeal), 2 eggs, 5 oz butter, 7 oz grated mature cheese, extra virgin olive oil, milk, 1 onion, nutmeg, sage, salt and pepper.
Method
First break the stale bread and soak it in milk for at least 3 hours. Meanwhile, brown the spinach in a pan with oil, salt, and nutmeg. Add them to the bread together with the onion which has been sliced and sautéed in a little extra virgin olive oil, half of the cheese and the eggs. Mix well with a wooden spoon and then with the help of two spoons form balls that you will then drop into a pot with boiling salted water. When they come to the surface, drain them, arrange them on plates and season with the remaining cheese, plenty of melted butter and some sage leaves for flavor.
Get some tips from our tutorial on how to prepare the perfect strangolapreti!