Over the long weekend my parents tore out their kitchen, it's the kitchen that's hosted many of our family dinners and holds many memories as Nanny and Buppy built the house in 1978. If those walls could talk, they would probably mention the leg wrestling contest that they witnessed back when Nanny and Buppy lived in the house, and tell you about a young Hanna making Won Ton's with "Nanny Dearest." However all of those memories are safely tucked away in the walls of the kitchen, and in just six short weeks (it might not feel short to mom), it will be a brand new kitchen with all new appliances, tile floor and granite counter tops, ready for all new stories. In the mean time Mom has set up a funny little kitchen for herself in the hallway, where she can probably make a meaner meal then most young adults could make in a gourmet kitchen. After a long day of demoing I thought a nice home cooked meal might be in order for them and I was sick to death of eating scrambled eggs and ice cream, so Chris and I decided that we would make something else that is soft and easily to chew, so ended up with home made sweet potato gnocchi with home made pork/chicken sausage in a brown butter sage sauce.

Gnocchi

2 large sweet potatoes, cleaned and pricked with a fork
12 oz, ricotta cheese, drained
1 C Parmesan grated (Plus more garnishing)
2 tbsp splenda brown sugar
2 tsps seal salt
1/2 tsp nutmeg
2 3/4 C All Purpose Flour

Directions:

1. Cook sweet potatoes in oven until soft (approx. 1hr at 425).
2. Cut into cooked sweet potato and let cool for about 5 minutes until you can handle. In large bowl mash or use a potato ricer to get sweet potatoes very fine. 
3. Mix cheese and seasoning into sweet potato mixture until well combined, with wooden spoon. 
4. Place remaining flour onto cleaned dry surface, dump sweet potato mixture on top and kneed until all flour is incorporated. 
5. Once well incorporated, make gnocchi's and place onto baking sheet until ready to use. If you haven't made gnocchi before, it's simple, take chunk of dough and roll out until a cylinder shape, about 1/2" wide, cute into cubes approx. 1/2".
6. To cook gnocchi, place into pot of boiling water until gnocchi float. Drain and serve. 

Brown Butter and Sage Sauce

1/4 C of butter

Fresh sage to taste

Directions: 

1. In sauce pan over medium heat, melt butter until froth's and becomes fragrant, and is a beautiful golden brown. This usually takes about 5-10 minutes. 
2. Once butter is browned, add sage and stir

Pork/Chicken Sausage

We literally wung this as we hadn't done it before. After some googling and getting some tips, we learned that you should use dried herbs not fresh so we took a meat grinder and ground up 1 breast of chicken with 2 pork chops, cut off the bone. We seasoned with fresh ground pepper, garlic powder, season salt, 1 shake of paprika, and an egg. We mixed until everything was well combined. We weren't sure how to cook so we took half the mixture and did on the stove top like you would cook ground beef, then the other half I formed into balls and baked in the oven until cooked throughout. 

To serve all of this we placed in a bowl, threw the sausage on top and mixed, drizzled the brown butter sauce over and added some Parmesan cheese.

It was delicious!

Enjoy!