Creamy Baked Chicken and Kale Gnocchi – 11sp

Gnocchi is a great store cupboard essential to have in so that you can whip up a delicious home made tea really quickly and simply. We often have it with a nice tomatoey sauce usually but tonight I thought I would try something different. The result was this delicious creamy baked delight.

The sauce feels really luxurious even though the whole thing is only 11sp and the kale gives it a lovely crunchy and fresh lift.

If you can’t get any Heck sausages, you could replace them with 350g diced chicken breast, frying as you would the sausages at the same point. This would make the dish 9sp per serving.

Creamy Baked Chicken and Kale Gnocchi

Serves 4 = 11sp per serving (Flex)

Ingredients

1 pack of Heck Chicken Sausages

½ tsp paprika and crushed chillies

1 large onion, finely chopped

2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

2 peppers, deseeded and finely diced

1 box of chestnut mushrooms, sliced (optional)

1 tsp plain flour

1 chicken stock cube, made up with 200 ml of boiling water

1 tbsp sun dried tomato pesto (or any pesto you fancy)

100ml white wine (optional)

4 tsp half fat crème fraiche

500g bag of kale

500g pack of gnocchi

40g half fat mature cheddar, grated

20g parmesan, grated

Method

Preheat the oven to 180c.

Squeeze the sausages out of their skins and crumble into a large frying pan. Season well, add the paprika and crushed chillies and fry on a medium/high heat in 1kal for 5-6 minutes until the sausage meat starts to brown and is cooked through. Remove the sausage meat from the pan.

In the same pan fry the onions for 5 minutes until 1kal until they start to soften and then add the peppers, garlic and mushrooms and fry for another few minutes. Add the flour, stir through and fry for another minute.

Next add the stock, wine and pesto and simmer for a few minutes until the sauce starts to thicken. Add the crème fraiche and the sausages back to the pan, stir and turn the heat down to low. Continue to warm while you prepare the kale and gnocchi.

Fill a large pan with salted boiling water. Add the kale and simmer for 4 minutes, then add the gnocchi to the same pan and simmer for 3 minutes until the gnocchi rises to the surface. Drain the gnocchi and kale and then add the creamy sauce.

Tip everything into a baking dish, top with the half fat cheese and parmesan and then pop into the oven for 15 minutes to bake.

Serve with a nice green side salad.

Enjoy!