basil |

In addition to mushroom-cream-white wine sauce, the one I made today with Italian sausage, tomatoes and herbs is my favorite sauce to serve with gnocchi. This sauce is so rich and flavorful. I like to use fresh tomatoes, but canned ones can be used as well. Usually I like to prepare homemade gnocchi, but don’t always have enough time, so this time I used store bought ones. This is how I make the sauce:

Ingredients:

Serves 4-6

2 packs of gnocchi (each 500 g or 1 lb)
2-3 Italian fresh sausages (or any other fresh kind)
500 g or 1 lb tomatoes (blanched, peeled and chopped)
1/4 of a large green pepper (finely sliced)
1/4 of a large red pepper (finely sliced)
3 garlic cloves (smashed and finely chopped)
salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
basil
oregano
parsley

1. Cook gnocchi in lightly salted water until they start coming to the surface. Strain, rinse and set aside.

2. Cut fresh sausage into 1/2 inch pieces and fry in a pan with a little olive oil until done and nicely browned. Remove the sausage pieces from the pan and set aside.

3. In the same frying pan saute garlic and peppers for few minutes on a low temperature. Add chopped tomatoes and 1/4 cup water and simmer for about 10 minutes or until sauce starts thickening. Add salt and fresh ground pepper to taste.

4. Now add sausage to the sauce, chopped herbs and gnocchi. Mix until combined and serve.

Yum, Yum, Yum! 🙂

It has been unusually warm in the Midwest the past couple of weeks. Somehow we jumped from winter right into summer. Crocuses and daffodils usually bloom in April, but this year they are blooming right now. It is not that I am complaining, I’m really loving it. 🙂 People are out and about, walking their pups, cleaning their yards and just enjoying the outdoors. You can’t miss the inviting smell of grilling either. It is that time of the year when you can get out of the kitchen, fire up your grill and enjoy good food and conversation. As my preparation for the grilling season, I made some herbed butter today. It really goes with any kind of meat, and possibilities (as of which herbs to use) are endless, just depending on your taste.

Herbed Butter

Printable recipe

2 sticks (226 g) butter (room temperature)
½ tsp salt (exclude salt if salted butter)
¼ tsp fresh ground pepper
2 garlic cloves (minced)
2 tbsp finely chopped Italian parsley
2 tbsp finely chopped basil
1 tbsp chopped thyme

*** Choice of herbs is all yours, You can mix and match what you like the most.

Whip the butter with a hand mixer until fluffy. Add salt, pepper and garlic and mix for about one minute. Add all the herbs and mix them into butter by hand.

I usually store Herbed Butter two ways:

1. I take plastic wrap and form the butter into a log. I freeze it and then when needed take out of the freezer and cut into ¼ in slices and top the grilled meat with it.

2. Other way is to fill the butter into a cake decorating bag with the star tip and make individual stars on a flat surface covered with parchment paper. Freeze the stars and then store them in a plastic container in the freezer.