Gnocchi with Cheese Sauce, Green Asparagus and Fried Speck Slivers

This is the finished dish after it's gone through the oven until it's golden, yummy!

Ingredients

• potato gnocchi : avge 150g/serving (buy ready-made), 500 g minimum for 4 persons

•  Swiss cheese: 200 g (half a cup) grated

•  Parmigiano cheese: 2 or 3 tablespoons, grated

• green asparagus: at least one dozen asparagus boiled in salted water: reserve one cup of the cooking liquid

• 100 g of Speck ham

• One cup milk  (skim milk if your prefer)

Method

1. Make the cheese sauce using one cup of the asparagus cooking liquid and one cup of milk. This cheese sauce does not need to be done with butter (better for your health, fewer calories!)

• Start with a big tablespoon of flour in one cup of cold milk + one cup of the asparagus cooking liquid - 
• bring to a boil (keep whipping so it won't attach to the pan and comes out smooth) - 
• boil 5 minutes to do away with the flour taste - 
• then add 200 g of grated Swiss cheese, salt and pepper, grated nutmeg to taste. 

2. Prepare the ingredients that go into the cheese sauce:

• cut the asparagus in small pieces, discarding any bit that is fibrous or hard
• fry the ham in a pan (use teflon, don't add any oil) until crisp then break it up in small pieces 
• Mix the above ingredients in the cheese sauce

3. Prepare a pyrex dish (or anything that goes in the oven) for your gnocchi: butter it and spread a little of the cheese sauce on the bottom

4. Cook the gnocchi in boiling water, lightly salted. As soon as they float up to the surface, take them out of the water with a slotted spoon and deposit in the pyrex dish.

5. Cover with cheese sauce and sprinkle grated parmigiano over the whole dish

6. Stick in a warm oven for 5 minutes then turn on the grill for a couple of minutes to brown.

That's it!