- Serves 2 - Ready in 25 minutes -
Gather together…
1 x 500g pack of ready-made, vacuum-packed potato gnocchi (posh brands usually taste much better than supermarket own-brand versions).
1 cup boiling water (taken from the full kettle of water the gnocchi soak in).
1 x 200g pack of (full fat or half fat) soft cheese (like Philadelphia, but I use the supermarket value own-brand version).
2 large handfuls (approx. a cereal bowl almost-full) of shredded cooked ham - 'ham hock' style chunky ham, NOT flat and slimy sandwich ham. Shredded-up, leftover slow cooker ham is ideal.
2 tbsp chopped, fresh mint (I keep mint ready-chopped in the freezer, Asda sells it home-compostable paper pots! I wash the greenery, chop and freeze any spare for future use and then home-compost the soil and the paper pot).
Pinch of ground, black pepper.
2 large handfuls of frozen peas.
Get cooking…
1. Boil a full kettle of water.
2. Preheat the oven to 180 C (160 C fan) or Gas 4.
3. In a medium/large bowl, soak the gnocchi in the kettle-full of boiling water. Leave to soak for 2 minutes.
4. Once the gnocchi has finished soaking, use a metal measurer to scoop up 1 cup of the hot water - add this to a medium oven tray (adding the water will ensure plenty of sauce). The oven tray I use for this recipe is approximately 30cm x 25cm x 5cm, don't use an overly-large tray (unless you double the recipe) or else the sauce will be too spread out.
5. Then drain the soaking gnocchi well, in a colander /sieve over the sink and add the drained gnocchi to the oven tray.
6. Also add the 200g of soft cheese, the 2 handfuls of shredded cooked ham, the 2 tbsp of chopped mint and the pinch of ground pepper. Stir well and spread out the ingredients evenly across the tray.
7. Bake in the pre-heated oven for 10 minutes.
8. After those ten minutes have passed, add the 2 large handfuls of frozen peas to the oven tray, stir and bake for a final 5 minutes.
9. Serve immediately and eat it all up on the day of making.
This recipe was adapted from the Little Roasting Tin's 'Baked Gnocchi, Creme Fraiche and Ham' recipe by Rukmini Iyer - I found creme fraiche to be too prone to splitting / curdling, so I used soft 'Philadelphia-style' cheese instead. This recipe is so quick, easy and versatile - you can use various additions in this dish: smoked salmon / shredded cooked ham / shredded cooked chicken (add 1 tbsp of wholegrain mustard to flavour the chicken version). Enjoy!