Pan fried gnocchi with goats' cheese and a working girl sauce

A recipe for Sharon.

Who is a vegetarian.

Pan-fried (I know, I know.  As opposed to what?  Tupperware box fried?) gnocchi with goats' cheese and a working girl sauce.

This recipe is based on a dish I have eaten many times at a little restaurant in London called Koha.

I am not going to suggest you make your own gnocchi.  I tried it once.  The dough morphed into something with the adhesive qualities of freshly laid tarmacadam.  I had gobbets of the stuff all over my hands and couldn't get them off.  I resorted to flinging my arms about wildly, in the manner of someone alarmed by a wasp.  There are still little bits of uncooked gnocchi dough on my kitchen ceiling.

You will need

Half a packet of gnocchi made by someone else
A cup of sticky tomato sauce (see my recipe for meatballs in tomato sauce for the method)
A scant dessertspoon of roughly chopped capers (or some toasted pinenuts if even the thought of a caper makes you go all funny)
A small handful of shrivelled black olives (absolutely not the ones packed in brine) roughly chopped
A handful of shredded basil
A handful of cubed soft goats cheese.
Olive oil

Method

Heat the sauce with the capers and olives.

Cook the gnocchi in briskly boiling salted water until they start to bob to the surface then drain.

Heat up enough olive oil in your non-stick frying pan to barely cover the bottom of the pan. Throw in the gnocchi and toss them around so they coated in the oil. Spread them out into a single layer.  Fry until the underbelly of each one has turned golden, flip over (the gnocchi, not you) and fry the other side. This little exercise will take 5-8 minutes. Do not fiddle.  If you start poking around the gnocchi will turn all anti-establishment on you and stick to the non-stick pan.

Remove to a warm bowl.  Top with the sauce, goats' cheese, basil and pinenuts ( if you have gone that route) and you are done.

I have called the sauce 'working girl sauce' as it is loosely modelled on spaghetti alla puttanesca (literally 'whore's style spaghetti' in Italian).  

More vegetarian recipes will follow!