Clams with chestnut gnocchi

I love chestnuts. They remind me of my grandmother. She lives in Switzerland, in the beautiful region of Ticino. She has a beautiful stone house in the mountains overlooking the Lago Maggiore.
When we visited when I was young, I would run around and gather chestnuts, which my grandmother would use to bake cakes or simply roast.

Chestnut trees are beautiful. And chestnuts are fun to collect. We would use some to make little toys with matches: chestnuts pigs, chestnut sheep and goats. I took this picture last September when I visited. The tree to the right is the same tree I used to collect chestnuts from and to the left is the pumpkin patch.

When we started to eat paleo, I thought of chestnuts and how they are used in multiple recipes in the Ticino region: chestnut cakes, roasted chestnuts, boiled chestnuts, etc.
I was lucky to find chestnuts at Fairway market and used them to bake a chocolate chestnut cake. It took a long time to put together but it was very satisfying. It is not easy to find raw chestnuts but a number of places carry either canned or steamed chestnuts, like Trader Joe's.
I found chestnut flour after a bit of research at Buon Italia, in Chelsea market in NYC. Amazon sells it too.

Now back to the recipe: Clams with chestnut gnocchis.

The chestnut gnocchis are easy to cook:
100g of chestnut flour
1 large egg
1 tablespoon olive oil or coconut oil
1 teaspoon of dried herbs

Mix everything in a bowl, then coat your hands with flour and roll spoonfuls into equal size rolls. Once all the dough is used up, cut the rolls to form little gnocchis. Boil in hot water for two minutes.
The gnocchi come out a little sweet, it is a good combination for a salty dish.

For the clams, I adapted the following recipe from Food Network. I bought the clams at the Farmer's market in Union Square, they were delicious! The recipe called for 6 mins only in the broth. I let my clams cook a little longer, some of them needed at least 10-12 mins to open up. 

And here is the end result: