I often see sweet potato and kale partnered up (especially in hashes or wintery salads), but I’m not a hugeee fan of sweet potato (or kale, for that matter). I can be swayed, however, if those ingredients are cooked properly. In the case of kale, that means cooking it down a lot and adding lots of garlic. For sweet potatoes, I’ve learned it’s pretty good in gnocchi form…enter Trader Joe’s.
When I saw TJ’s sweet potato gnocchi, I knew it would be a good match for the sausage my beau has been picking up weekly from our local butcher. I had been making some sort of sausage pasta every single week and thought this would be a good way to mix things up. Then I got to thinking…sweet potato and kale pair nicely…sausage and kale pair nicely (helloooo Italian wedding soup)…this could be a nice little threesome.
Start by cooking down a bag of kale in olive oil with 1-2 cloves of minced garlic and 1 minced shallot. Meanwhile, start cooking the sweet potato gnocchi according to the package directions. Once the kale is tender, crumble Italian sausage into the pan and brown. Gently toss the sausage/kale mixture with the gnocchi and top with some parmesan.
This combo really works. Turns out, when you cook kale down and season it with stuff like this, I like it – who knew? And [thanks to the geniuses at Trader Joe’s] the gnocchi creates its own sauce so there’s very little work to be done here.
Peaches to Apples 