Julie Van Rosendaal/The Globe and Mail
The sheet pan meal has become the modern-day casserole – a means of streamlining an entire dinner into (or onto) one dish, minus the cream-of tinned soup sauce and crunchy breadcrumb or crushed-cereal topping.
This style of one-pan cooking is often (charmingly) called a traybake – a 19th-century term that originated in the U.K., originally referring to large sheet-style cakes and other desserts that could be easily sliced into squares, that now also applies to meals baked on sheets (or trays).
Baking or roasting every element of your meal at once is at once simple and creative, and the wide range of sheet pan sizes on the market allows the cook to prepare as much or as little as required. Smaller traybakes are easily done in a toaster oven or “air fryer” (mini-convection oven).
The only (fairly lenient) rule of traybakes is ensuring your combination of ingredients will cook in roughly the same amount of time. Virtually all meat and vegetables benefit from the high, dry heat of an oven; denser ingredients such as potatoes and cauliflower can be cut into smaller pieces to cook more quickly. And there’s the option to add more fragile ingredients, such as asparagus, thin fish fillets or melty cheese, toward the end of a longer cooking time.
Keeping things spread out, rather than crowded together, will allow for better air circulation and optimal crispness, if that’s what you’re going for. (A full tray of ingredients that contain a lot of moisture, such as veggies, will steam more than brown.)
This one-pan gnocchi traybake makes use of fresh gnocchi, which does not require boiling – toss it straight onto the pan from the package, drizzle in oil and it will emerge crispy on the outside, chewy within. Cherry or grape tomatoes will blister and pop.
You can add any kind of meltable cheese. A soft chèvre is delicious, as is any soft or meltable plant-based cheese. A soft-ripened cheese, such as Brie or Camembert, can be left whole (score the top rind with a sharp knife) or sliced to lay over the gnocchi and tomatoes to melt for the last few minutes of cooking time. Feta, particularly Macedonian-style, or soft chèvre will soften to the point of being able to partially coat the gnocchi and veg once it all gets tossed together, along with a handful of greens, if you have some. Or you can keep things separate with plate of gnocchi, veg and cheese to eat however you like.
There are so many other ingredients you could add here – mushrooms, peppers, broccolini, asparagus (when it’s in season). It’s a great way to use up wilting veggies and cheese ends from your fridge.
