One day I wanted to make meatballs but didn’t know what to eat them with.  I didn’t feel like pasta, or a sub, or Ikea sauce, so what else do you do with meatballs?  The Barefoot Contessa made her chicken meatballs into Italian wedding soup (yum!).  Instead, I thought I’d do a GF gnocchi in a pesto sauce.  I had made her chicken meatballs before but adapted them to be gluten, dairy, and egg-free and they were amazing – you don’t need the cheese in them at all.  The secret ingredient is the sausage meat. So much flavour with so little effort is just how I like it.

I also had some leftover homemade pesto in the freezer, made with garlic, fresh basil, arugula, walnuts, olive oil, and Drunken Goat cheese (a mild Spanish cheese soaked in red wine for a few days, leaving it with a berry-stained edible outer layer – I’m not a fan of super strong cheeses so I use this instead of parmesan).   You just toss the gnocchi with the pesto and some fresh arugula and you’ve got a simple fast meal when you want some comfort food.  PS – this meal is very garlicky so keep those post-dinner breath mints handy.

I first learned how to make homemade pesto in a cooking class at Dish Cooking Studio in Toronto.  My biz partner J and I drunkenly victoriously outbid everyone at a charity auction to win the class where founder Trish Magwood taught us how to make a simple basil, pine nut pesto – so easy and so much fresher and tastier than the oily, jarred store-bought pestos. I changed the recipe cuz I like the bite of a little arugula and the brain food qualities of walnuts.

The good news is both the meatballs and pesto recipes make more than you would need for a dinner for two so any leftovers can be frozen for the next time you need a no-effort comfort meal.  Frozen extras = presto pesto.