Healthy Weeknight Meal Done in 30 Minutes

We're making a one tray roasted gnocchi caprese dinner that should be ready in 30 minutes. We're also going to make a beautiful little balsamic glaze to drizzle on top, so here's everything you need. To begin we're going to preheat the oven to 200 degrees celsius fan and then we're going to go ahead and drop our gnocchi straight into a pan of salted boiling water. This is 500 grams of gnocchi and we just need to cook it for three to four minutes until they float on the surface of the water. Then we're going to drain it and then we'll drizzle it in a little bit of extra virgin olive oil and season with a touch of salt and pepper, then mix everything together until the gnocchi is fully coated. Next we're going to take our gnocchi that's nicely coated in some olive oil and spread it out on a baking tray. And when we roast this it's going to take on a beautiful golden colour in parts, some of it will stay soft in the centre and it'll be really beautiful. So next I've got my tomatoes and I'm going to dot these tomatoes around the tray. I've got cherry tomatoes that are on the vine but you can use any cherry tomatoes that you've got. You can take them off the vine, leave them on, but I think the vine adds a lovely scent and flavour so I'm going to leave them on. I'm just going to dot them in and around the tray because as these roast they will burst and release their natural sugars and that will coat the gnocchi and create a lovely almost gentle sauce to coat the final dish. And once you've done that I've got two bell peppers and I'm just going to roughly chop them however you want. I'm just going to do nice sort of strips just like this and we're going to dot them into the tray as well and they will have exactly the same effect as the tomatoes, go nice and sweet, nice and roasted. I know it's not classic and a caprese but it does add a little bit more to this dish. With that done I'll add a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil just to get some on the veg to help get it started when it's roasting in the oven and of course the extra virgin olive oil adds a lovely peppery fruity flavour to it as well. Season with a little pinch of salt over the vegetables that we've just put on and then tear up some fresh basil leaves and scatter them over. I'm then going to place this into the hot oven until the tomatoes start to burst and the gnocchi begins to crisp up. So while everything's roasting in the oven we're going to make a really simple and quick balsamic glaze and it couldn't be easier. We've got 120 millilitres of balsamic vinegar and we're just going to place that into a saucepan. Then we'll put it over a high heat, bring it to a boil and reduce it down to half the amount or until it looks a nice glaze like consistency. So it's been about 15 to 20 minutes and as you can see the tomatoes have burst and blistered and the gnocchi is starting to go a little bit golden in places and there's one final step that we need to do. I've got two bowls of fresh mozzarella and I'm just simply going to break it off in big chunks and dot it around the tray and then we'll place it back into the oven for a further five minutes just to warm that mozzarella through and melt it slightly before we serve. And after a few minutes in the oven you'll have something that looks like this. The mozzarella will have melted down slightly and it's all nice and ready just to finish it off. So first of all we're going to drizzle it with a little bit of balsamic glaze and then we'll scatter it with a few more fresh basil leaves. I would serve this in the tray in the center of the table and let everyone dig in or of course you could portion it up into bowls or plates. We cheated a little bit with this one, we used two pans as well as the one tray but there's ways you can avoid that. If you use fresh gnocchi you don't need to blanch it first and if you don't want to make the balsamic glaze you could just splash some balsamic vinegar over the stuff as it's roasting and then you don't need to do that or you can buy the balsamic glaze. Anyway a very simple recipe, perfect for lunch or dinner. I hope you enjoy this one. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video.