Gnocchi Bolognese

Last night, I was trying to decide what to make for dinner. All I knew I was going to use was gnocchi for sure, so I was browsing Pinterest for gnocchi recipes. I found one for a Gnocchi Bolognese that looked really good, and easy, so I chose that. There was a sauce it called for, napolentata, that I had never heard of, so I looked it up, and figure out how to make that, so my dinner had an extra step. To make the polentata, here’s how to do it (in case anyone wants to make this) (ps the measurements are in grams, so I just guessed how to do this):

1.5 kg very ripe tomatoes (I just used 2 cans of diced tomatoes, I wasn’t going to peel and cut my own)
2 TB olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped (I used ½ an onion)
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 TB tomato paste
1 Tsp white sugar
2 bay leaves

Heat oil in large saucepan over medium heat. Add onion and garlic. Cook, stirring, for 5 minutes. Stir in tomatoes, tomato paste, sugar, and bay leaves. Cover, bring to boil. Reduce heat to low. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 1 hour, or until sauce thickens. Season with salt and pepper. Remove bay leaves.

So, not too hard. The sauce never really thickened up for me, it just sort of...hung out, but that’s ok. Then, to make the Bolognese:

1 TB olive oil
1 medium brown onion, finely chopped (I used the other half of the onion)
500g beef mince (I used 1 LB ground beef, I assumed it was the same thing)
575g jar napolentata pasta sauce
500g potato gnocchi
Parmesan cheese

Heat oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat. Add onion. Cook, stirring, for 3 minutes or until softened. Add beef. Cook, stirring with a wooden spoon to break up the meat until browned. Add pasta sauce. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, and simmer for 5 minutes or until sauce has thickened. Meanwhile, cook the gnocchi according to package directions. Add gnocchi to meat mixture, toss with Parmesan cheese and serve.

Ok, so this was really good. I really liked it. Unfortunately, the onion in this was intense, there was just too much of it. And that was with me cutting it in half, so I wonder what it would have been like to have put in the entire whole 2 onions instead of just doing one. So if I were to make this in the future, I would probably just do the onions in the beef, and leave it out of the sauce. But other than that, it was really good. I’d make it again.