The other night we decided that we should have gnocchi. Next decision was what sort of sauce? Daughter’s request was a chickeny tomatoey sauce.

Here is a more elaborate tasty sauce that I came up with. Yes you can put Parmesan onto the pasta and still keep it low sodium. I have now begun adding a nutritional table to the recipes so that you have a better understanding of the impact of salty ingredients like cheese. There are 2 sodium levels with 15g and 25g of Parmesan per serve. you can see the impact with the extra cheese and that you are still well below the 120mg/100g sodium!!

Here is the gnocchi recipe that you can prepare the day before.

Ingredients

1 Red onion diced
4 Cloves garlic medium
1 tbsp Olive oil
2 Medium tomatoes (200g)
400g Unsalted diced tomatoes
3 tbsp Unsalted tomato paste
2 tbsp Smoked paprika
2 tbsp Molasses
1 Dried chilli
2 tsp Cracked black pepper
½ cup Fresh basil ripped & loosely packed
4 Chicken thighs skinless bone in 600g or out 500g (one per serve)
Extra basil for garnish
60g Shaved Parmesan (sodium 640mg/100g)

Instructions

Peel the tomatoes by criss-cross scoring the bottom of them and putting them in boiling water for 2-3 minutes. Then dice them.

Chop the onion and garlic and in a preheated medium heavy bottomed pot fry them in olive oil until translucent.

Add the tomatoes (fresh and tinned). Add the paprika, chilli, pepper and molasses. Bring to a boil and turn down to a simmer with the lid on.

Prepare the chicken by chopping into large chunks (or into halves if still on the bone).

After about 10 mins of simmering add the chicken and fresh basil. Stir.

Bring back to a simmer and then cover. Cook for about 40 mins or until the chicken can be split with a spoon, stirring occasionally. Reducing volume by about 1/3.

Let sit to one side while you cook the gnocchi.

Serving

Serves 4

Just before serving reheat the sauce.

Serve with gnocchi. Add fresh basil leaves and fresh Parmesan.

Nutritional Information

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* Per 100g figures are based on cooking the sauce down by 1/3 of the original weight to 950g  For more accurate calculations you will need to weigh the final sauce and recalculate.

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* Per 100g figures are based on cooking the sauce down by 1/3 of the original weight and pre final cooked weight of gnocchi combined to be 1.7 kg  For more accurate calculations you will need to weigh the final sauce and gnocchi and recalculate.