I am a sucker for gnocchi; Bundles of little pillowy potato joy that can be cooked in a number of ways (my favourite being pan-fried).

But sometimes I am a bit lazy and despite having gone on a gnocchi making class and knowing how to do it I will buy a mixture of the fresh and shelf stable pre-made stuff. Doing that is how I ended up with some spinach gnocchi that was available during a special week at Lidl.

On the first day I did it with some chicken, tomatoes, feta and pesto. Which I usually love but this had a bit of a weird taste going on and I thought maybe it just didn’t mix too well with the mainly feta sauce going on or something.

But here is the thing; I live by myself. No meal involving a packet like this is just one meal. So the next day I mixed it with mushrooms, tomatoes, baby corn, red pepper, pesto and cheddar and pan fried it up extra well. It didn’t make an improvement. This might sound a bit silly but somehow it made me think of nettles in the taste of it.

In fact, it was not even purely the taste. The texture of this just seemed to be a little bit dense and not quite as fluffy and pillowy as usual. Not even compared to their other cupboard stable regular gnocchi.

They also do a special tomato based one that originally I had considered giving a go as in theory it with some mozzarella and certain meats could make it a delightful gnocchi bake. Maybe I will have better luck with their fresh flavoured/stuffed ones.

I would love to hear how you feel about spinach infused things in general vs normal spinach? I love normal spinach but this just didn’t seem quite right.