Baked Gnocchi with Bacon & Blue Cheese Recipe
You should probably serve this with something healthy, like a green starter salad. Or, you could just grab a fork and eat the whole darn thing yourself straight out of the pan, it's that good!
Ingredients
Instructions
- Crumble the gorgonzola into small pieces.
- Wash the cherry tomatoes.
- Start heating oven to 220 C / 425 F / Gas Mark 7.
- Cook the gnocchi for just 2 minutes in a pot of boiling water, drain quickly in colander and put back in pot. Dump both cheeses in, and toss the gnocchi in the cheese until the cheese melts. Season with pepper, then add the cherry tomatoes and toss.
- Empty all into a square ovenproof dish about 9 inches x 9 inches (23 cm x 23 cm.) Arrange the slices of bacon over top and cook on top shelf of oven until bacon is cooked and everything else is bubbly and golden -- about 15 minutes.
- Serve hot.
Notes
You can buy gnocchi, fresh or frozen, at just about any grocery store these days. If you buy frozen, thaw first.
You want about a pound or a 500g package for 4 filling servings. Use a good, fatty (streaky) bacon -- this is a recipe where the cheaper cuts are better!
You can make a vegetarian version by omitting the bacon, or replacing perhaps with strips or grilled eggplant or roasted red pepper. If you're not using the bacon, consider drizzling a very light splodge of olive oil over it all.
Don't salt the recipe (other than the water for the gnocchi), as the blue cheese will make it taste salty enough.
You can make a more Italian version by substituting mascarpone for cream cheese, gorgonzola for blue cheese, and pancetta for bacon -- but only do these if they don't cost the earth where live. After all, this is peasant-style cooking: if it costs the earth, then we've missed the whole point.
Instead of cherry tomatoes, you can use grape tomatoes. And if both are out of season and ridiculously expensive, then use quartered hothouse tomatoes (they're going to be cooked, anyway.)
This recipe is easily doubled or tripled.
You'll need a larger dish, but reach for one that's wider or longer rather than deeper, so there's more surface for more bacon and browning action on top.
You can make ahead up to where you would put the bacon on top. Refrigerate covered with plastic wrap or tin foil. When you're ready to go, remove the plastic wrap or foil, put the bacon on top, start cooking at a lower temperature first to get things warmed up, then increase to the recommended cooking temperature and proceed.
100g of each these cheeses equals about ½ cup, lightly packed or a ⅓ of a cup, pressed down.
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!