Tasty Gnocchi And I Am Sure Jamie Would Forgive Me The 6 Seconds

On Saturday I returned to one of my favourite 15 Minute Meals, sausage gnocchi with warm kale and bean salad. It is tasty and a great meal on a windy day; it also uses lot of vegetables which keeps it from being too heavy. I timed my cooking, so I followed the suggestion in the book of getting all the pots out, the ingredients ready and a kettle boiled. This seems like a bit of a "faff" but I had been shopping so it was easier to unpack to a tray than into, and then out of, cupboards.  I managed to do it in 15 minutes and 6.69 seconds. This is partly down to having done it before and partly down to using sausages. There are loads of 15 minute meals using squashed meat but I spend a  lot of time making sure it is cooked all the way through. This recipe uses the inside of sausages so its really easy to break it up and know it is cooked.

I have not been able to find good chilli sausages so I tend to use good quality sausages and a blob of "easy chilli". This time I used normal broccoli and frozen green beans as the quality of the fresh green beans and tender stem broccoli was not good. Neither made a difference, I just made sure that I use a thin slice setting for the broccoli stalk and cut the florets small. In the past my husband has made fresh gnocchi which takes longer but tastes amazing. If you are not making your own gnocchi I would say that there is no noticeable difference  in taste between the vac packed gnocchi that is found with the dried pasta and the vac packed gnocchi in the chiller, however the stuff in the chiller is more expensive. In my opinion it is better to spend the money on the sausage than the gnocchi.

This is a big rustic dish and in many ways is not a pretty as some of the others, but it is incredibly tasty, the fennel seeds with the chilli heat and tomato bring a lot of flavour. It is meaty and the gnocchi is a welcome change from pasta. The greens are fresh but with a hint of salty bacon, sweet honey and crunchy hazelnuts. Looking at the ingredients I was worried that the bacon and nuts would overpower the greens but they don't at all. This dish is very balanced and didn't generate too much washing up either.

Sausage Gnocchi with Kale and Beans.