Recipe: Butternut squash plus tomatoes plus gnocchi for the win
Potato gnocchi roasted with vegetables and sausage makes an easy one-pan meal. Kathy Morrison
So it’s cool enough to cook dinner in the oven, but still nice enough that I don’t want to spend hours in the kitchen. Garden things to do outside, you know.
The solution: A sheet-pan meal, in which all the ingredients roast together in the oven.
This dish is a riff on a recipe from thekitchn.com. Substitutions are easy: I had Juliet tomatoes but no mushrooms, so into the pan they went. Broccoli cut small would work or green beans or whatever, but don’t forget to include onions.
Gnocchi cooked in the oven is far superior in flavor and texture to boiled gnocchi. It puffs up and gets just a bit crispy – delightful.
Sheet pan gnocchi with vegetables and sausage
Serves 4
Ingredients:
1 small butternut squash, peeled, deseeded and cut into chunks
1 small or ½ large red onion, cut into 1-inch chunks
8 ounces mushrooms, quartered, or 8-12 ounces grape or cherry tomatoes
1 package (1 pound or more) shelf-stable potato gnocchi
1 to 2 tablespoons fresh rosemary, chopped
8 to 16 ounces uncooked hot or sweet Italian sausage, in casings or bulk
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, or to taste
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Grated Parmesan cheese, for serving
Instructions:
Arrange two oven racks to split the oven into thirds. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
On a large rimmed baking pan, combine the butternut chunks, the onion and the mushrooms or tomatoes (or use both!). Sprinkle the rosemary over the vegetables, and add the gnocchi to the pan. Drizzle the olive oil over the pan, then sprinkle with about ½ teaspoon of salt and grinding of black pepper. Toss to coat.
Remove the sausage from its casings and drop bite-size chunks of it all over the vegetables and gnocchi.
Place the sheet pan on the lower rack of the oven. Roast for about 25 minutes, stirring after about 15 minutes. The sausage should be cooked through, the gnocchi plumped and the butternut chunks tender.
Move the sheet pan to the upper rack and broil on High until the gnocchi are lightly brown and crisp. This happens quickly, about 3 minutes, so don’t walk away.
Serve in large bowls and topped with grated Parmesan, if desired. A salad and a glass of zinfandel are perfect accompaniments.
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Garden Checklist for week of May 12
Get your gardening chores and irrigation done early in the day before temperatures rise.
* Plant, plant, plant! It’s prime planting season in the Sacramento area. Time to set out those tomato transplants along with peppers and eggplants. Pinch off any flowers on new transplants to make them concentrate on establishing roots instead of setting premature fruit.
* Direct-seed melons, cucumbers, summer squash, corn, radishes, pumpkins and annual herbs such as basil.
* Harvest cabbage, lettuce, peas and green onions. This heat will cause leafy greens and onions to flower; pick them before they bolt.
* In the flower garden, direct-seed sunflowers, cosmos, salvia, zinnias, marigolds, celosia and asters.
* Plant dahlia tubers. Other perennials to set out include verbena, coreopsis, coneflower and astilbe.
* Transplant petunias, marigolds and perennial flowers such as astilbe, columbine, coneflowers, coreopsis, dahlias, rudbeckia and verbena.
* Keep an eye out for slugs, snails, earwigs and aphids that want to dine on tender new growth.
* Feed summer bloomers with a balanced fertilizer.
* For continued bloom, cut off spent flowers on roses as well as other flowering plants.
* Got fruit trees? If you haven't already done so, thin orchard fruit such as apples, peaches, pears, pluots and plums before they grow too heavy, breaking branches or even splitting the tree. Leave the largest fruit on the branch, culling the smaller ones, and allow for 5 to 6 inches (or a hand's worth) between each fruit.
* Thin grape bunches, again leaving about 6 inches between them. For the remaining bunches, prune off the "tail" end, about the bottom third of the bunch, so that the plant's energy is concentrated in the fruit closest to the branch.
* As spring-flowering shrubs finish blooming, give them a little pruning to shape them, removing old and dead wood. Lightly trim azaleas, fuchsias and marguerites for bushier plants.
* Add mulch to the garden to help keep that precious water from evaporating. Mulch also cuts down on weeds. But don’t let it mound around the stems or trunks of trees or shrubs. Leave about a 6-inch to 1-foot circle to avoid crown rot or other problems.
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