15 Minute Meals- Part 1: Sausage Gnocchi

New book: Jamie's 15 Minute Meals! Me and lots of other people have received this book (I'd say gem, but I am actually not sure, yet) under their Christmas tree. They would have received the book for similar reasons- we want quick, nutritious, tasty food. We might go through the book in different ways. I read 15 Minute Meals and literally understand that the book will deliver a 15 minute meal-see core blog. My experience is that I know these meals will take longer, but... I LOVE a challenge. Cue: my series of 15 Minute Meal encounters.

 

I thought I would start by actually reading the introduction, as Jamie suggested during his visit to BBC's One Show. (I usually take the man-with-instructions-and-jump-right-in approach). Practice makes perfect... rhythm... it's not a race (eet is a race! It's always a race!).

 

 He continues talking about the low cost of the meals and their nutritional value. He's received a lot of stick from some of his other recipe books containing meals with really high fat and salt. Those of you avid Jamie fans will know that you generally halve the amount of oil and butter he calls for. I think the low-cost aspect is interesting, though and promise to put it to the test in a "Cook-in vs. Take-out" challenge later this year. And of course... make sure you have all the gear- to go with the idea(r).

 

 

 

So, where to start... Sausage Gnocchi. Always the first words: Ingredients Out.

Umm... I need to find some gnocchi from somewhere- and couldn't. Thank you chavs of South Birmingham for saturating our local food establishments with uninteresting cuisine. Not that gnocchi is interesting, but it certainly is not curry chips nor fried chicken.

 

As it was Christmas break when I started this book, I had time on my hands to give making gnocchi a shot. Off to Jamie on advice with making gnocchi from scratch and this 15 Minute Meal has just turned into something quite a bit longer... but we won't count this pre-work in when I hit start on the timer= typical game rules.

 

Making gnocchi from scratch involves roasting potatoes in the oven for two hours, letting them part cool so you don't burn your hands, and then mixing them with spices and egg yolk. Jamie says it takes some practice to "get it right" but doesn't offer up what "right" looks like. But I feel this all went surprisingly well for a first attempt- I really think that my inner Polish genes kicked in to help as there is a similar traditional Polish dumpling dish that I am not about to try and spell phonetically.

 

 

See... the dough is sticking to itself... not my hands= success.

 

As I planned to make this meal in 15 minutes, and needed to make some gnocchi that took well over two hours to knock up, I abandoned the 15 Minute Meal attempt to make a quick something else for dinner and decided to use my lovely gnocchi the next day. They should keep in the fridge, right?

 

Wrong! I either didn't quite get my dough correct, which is highly likely, or else fresh gnocchi has a pretty instant shelf life. In either case, my what-was-firm little bundles of potato heaven were now falling apart and sticking to everything except themselves. I dreaded to "drop them in a pot of boiling water to test if they are ok" as suggested in Cook with Jamie. Sure enough, I need to keep practising.

Back to the real point of all of this mess... and I can assure you that 15 Minute Meal cooking is consistently a mess thus far, I'm making Sausage Gnocchi (or Fusilli).

 

Day 2: Ingredients Out. I love this part. I love how fresh and delicious everything looks when you pull it out and line it up. This is when you know you are cooking proper food. You can actually account for every flavour and every ingredient. You can see how (almost) everything looks in its natural state. Oh, and this pre-work took 11 min and 5 seconds to undertake.

 

Step 2: Get cooking...  

2 min 55 sec to get the sausage out of the skins and into the preheated pan.

Minor vent here for two reasons:

1) I still can't get my head around pans and pans and pots and pans. UK cookbooks call a pot a pan and it is usually a pot if they say a lidded pan. It is usually a pan when they call it a frying pan. A pot is always only the big one for soup.

2) Because this is 15 Minute Meals, the obligatory crushed garlic and chopped onion that are staples in Jamie's other cook books are missing because these ingredients take time to peel and squash and chop. So, I have done my prework and pre-read the recipe and pre-chopped these extra allyls.

 

7 min 8 sec: I have cooked my meat and am adding veg and passata.

 

11 min 19 sec: haven't touched the pasta yet, let's hope this cooks uber fast. Even gnocchi takes more than 3 min 41 sec to cook.

 

 

 13 min 40 sec: greens cooked (albeit a bit slimy) and salad dressing mixed.

13 min 56 sec: nearly done. Broccoli is not quite cooked for my husband's liking, need to keep cooking.

20 min 8 sec: Finished cooking. This time does not include the time it took me to plate up the food, although it is suggested to pretty much just throw the food onto some platters so everyone can dig in. But gnocchi disaster aside, I am not far off from what was directed. 

 

 

What can I say about this 15-ish (~35) minute meal? Well, it was tasty! Not outstanding, but a good mid-week meal that gives you something else to eat rather than the usual cyclical five. And it combined ingredients that I would not normally have put together:

1) fennel in my pasta was a good trial. Next time I will sub in cumin seeds, but all in all, a good try.

2) broccoli is usually a side ingredient in this house, or if in a mixed dish, it's only a stir-fry. This was also surprisingly a good way to sneak some rough fibre and vitamins into the dish.

3) I will find some gnocchi somewhere and try this again. I will not ever try to make gnocchi from scratch again because it is not worth the electricity bill in running my oven for two hours.

 

And what we didn't like about it:

1) The warm wilted greens as they are not to everyone's (ahem... Edge's) taste... but nor are the hazelnuts friends with my protein receptors.

2) The entire dish should serve 4 with approximately 526 kcal per serving- Good diet food if you are strict to the portion sizing. What I found is that there was a lot of pasta with little "goodness" (broccoli, sausage- and I even added two extra sausages). You could maybe feed two parents and two kids under 12; otherwise, this is good for 3 people (still weak on meat) and you might still want a dessert. And I would add mushrooms next time... it needed one more chunky thing in it to balance out the pasta.