Merda de can — "dog turd" in Catalan — is a French-Italian peasant dumpling of spinach and ricotta that is named after exactly what it looks like. The naming convention is the most honest in European cooking. The dish itself is a high-wire act: two cups of cooked spinach, drained until your forearms hurt, mixed with ricotta and egg and just enough flour to hold without becoming pasta, then poached gently into oblong dumplings that should taste of garden and dairy and nothing else.
Tom Berry is the chief culinary officer of COJE Management Group in Boston — Coquette, Yvonne's, several others. His winning spinach dumplings from this episode are now on the menu at Coquette in the Seaport. That is the rare Beat Bobby Flay aftermarket: a competition dish that became a restaurant dish.
Bobby brought a dumpling. Berry brought a dumpling that ended up on a menu.