Gnocchi with Roasted Tomato Sauce and Lemon Zest
It seems like just yesterday that I was fawning over my tomato starts, compulsively checking their growth and the moisture level in the soil.
Then summer happened--kids on the deck "helping" my plants along, vacations when all my plants went unforgivably long without water, the reality of my distracted self. Still, in spite of neglect, I've got tomatoes out there, hanging on to bedraggled stems, bright, splitting orbs in the middle of brown leaves.
Here's what to do with those. You'll have to leave your oven on for awhile, but the concentrated tomato flavor is worth it. With the Seattle rain starting in earnest, you won't mind anyway. The longer you cook it, the thicker it will be--thick enough to put on toast with goat cheese or brie. If it's a bit thinner, what a beautiful sauce it makes. Or tangy bath for fried bread. It will be quite seedy, especially if you've got cherry tomatoes. Tomato seeds don't bother me one bit, though. Maybe I should put on my recipe-naming hat and call this "Rustic Roasted Tomato Sauce." I don't want to go down the rustic road, though, because almost everything I make should contain that modifier if I'm being honest.
My friend Sue is a brilliant gardener, and when I saw her artfully trellised tomatoes a couple weeks ago, I started planning for next year. I've got a lot to learn. This is Year Four of my vegetable garden. I've gotten a little better, but more than that, I've gotten better at just accepting what it is. A crazy, unkept, terrifically imperfect little plot that reminds me where food really comes from and blesses me with harvest though I feel I don't deserve it.
Roasted Tomato Sauce
Makes about 4 cups. I cooked mine for around two hours. You can leave it in longer if you want to cook more liquid out of it. Also, though I don't mind seeds, a bunch of tomato skins in your sauce is probably more rustic than you want. I just pick through with my fingers after it's cooked and cooled, pulling out the skins. Many of them have come off naturally and rolled up into little cylinders. For ones that are still stuck to tomatoes, they will pull off really easily. OR you can plop all your fresh tomatoes in boiling water for one minute before roasting them. This will loosen the skins and you can peel them before putting them in the oven.
3 lbs. tomatoes (any kind--I used a mixture of cherry, beefsteak, and roma), skins removed before cooking or after (see above)
handful fresh thyme, oregano, rosemary, or mixture
3 large garlic cloves, minced
lots of kosher salt
1 Tb. sugar
1/2 c. extra virgin olive oil
Combine everything in a 9 x 13 pan and bake at 350 for 1 1/2 to 3 hours.
Gnocchi with Roasted Tomato Sauce and Lemon Zest
Serves 4. Here's how we ate our sauce last night. !!!!! It went down way too easy. You don't smother the gnocchi in sauce-just enough to coat all of it lightly.
1 lb. gnocchi (I bought the frozen kind from DeLaurenti. So tender.)
2 c. roasted tomato sauce, warmed
1/2 c. finely grated parmesan
zest of one large lemon
2 Tb. fresh thyme or lemon thyme, leaves stripped off stem
1 T. fresh oregano, finely chopped
1 ts. aleppo pepper
kosher salt
Combine parmesan, lemon zest, fresh herbs, aleppo, and salt in small bowl.
Cook gnocchi according to directions--mine took 3 minutes. Drain, then toss with warm tomato sauce.
Divide into bowl, top with a generous sprinkle of parmesan mixture.
September 7, 2009
Reader Comments (23)
This looks so good. I love the soft, meltiness of gnocchi. I always forget about it. What's aleppo pepper?
Really fabulous! I was just thinking of putting gnocchi on the menu in the upcoming weeks. Hopefully I can find some decent ones at the store. Your recipe is exactly what I'm craving. Thanks!
Cheers,
*Heather*
yum!
Now I am absolutely starving!! That looks amazing--please come make it for me tonight? :)
We love gnocchi, can't wait to try this one. I made your Birthday Barley salad this weekend, it was yummy and much easier to make than I had anticipated!
I did some roasted cherry tomatoes like this early last week and ate them like candy. I tried to get Jasmine to try them, no go. So sad, because they were so sweet. The rest went into your mac and cheese. I'm hoping MacPhersons has tomatoes cheap. I'm in a tomato phase.
I love to roast tomatoes, especially the gross ones we get 11 months of the year here. You are so lucky to have some of your own. I love this idea with gnocchi - it is one of my husband's faves.
This looks really yummy....
This looks FABULOUS! But I don't have quite that many tomatoes. So instead, charged with making a vegetarian entree for the Farm Tour dinner tomorrow, I'm grilling Ratatouille. Yes. On the BBQ, in lieu of in the oven I don't have, I'm roasting onions, tomatoes, eggplant, zuchinni, red peppers, and garlic out on the grill. The neighbors keep dropping by, "what 'cha cookin?" they ask. It smells like a pizza cooking out in the yard :) Thanks!
Yellow Hat (as we call him) and George love to go to a local Italian restuarant in their neighborhood. Chef Pisghetti' grows all his own vegetables on the rooftop of his building, and when trouble ensues with the garden (involving an unsupervised George, of course) he swears he's going to close down the place if he has to buy shipped-in vegetables. Chef Pisghetti has a beloved little cat who runs around the place, named Gnocci.
I've got to go there and try the cannoli sometimes, I hear it's fabulous!
Gorgeous looking gnocchi and I love your addition of lemon zest, excellent!
I made the roasted tomato sauce this evening and it was so good. Oh my, glad there was some left over for another time.
I love your sauce and I love your gnocchi. Thanks for sharing!
Hi Sarah,
Just picked a couple of heirloom tomatoes from the garden and put them in the oven to roast. Tomatoes from the garden are one of our favorite parts of summer...
I've been reading your blog almost daily and enjoy it very much. The recipes, stories and pictures are delightful, thank you for sharing them. A friend of yours from Plain (Jackie) passed along the website and we're hooked. In July we made your yummy (and I do mean YUMMY) lemon bread. If you have a yummy recipe to share for small batches of canned salsa, that would be most fabulous!
Thanks for sharing this slice of your life with the online foodie community,
Cathy :O)
Made the sauce today from from garden tomatoes, which were piling up on the counter. Intensely, velvety, rich, best-of-fall-in-a-bowl. We've been sneaking/dipping homemade French bread in it all afternoon, and now I'm hoping there's still enough left to toss with pasta for dinner!
Made these today and the smell from the oven was heavenly. I'm going to pair some tomorrow night with pesto over pasta, all in an effort to get the most out of our garden! I can't wait to savor each bite.
I must admit that I was nervous I was going to be disappointed tonight because of how awesome the smell was yesterday and my growing anticipation of this meal for the past 24 hours. But, my expectations were actually exceeded!!! Both my husband and I ate this meal with oohs and aahs between bites. I used thyme and oregano from our garden and I think the thyme added some awesome depth. I also loved the pesto with it, but only did that because of an abundance of basil. It was an excellent substitution and I felt like the Leftoverist had trained me well. I just had to post again because we would've toasted you at dinner tonight had wine been present. This will probably be one of my all-time favorite meals. So, here's to Sarah! (P.S. I have your mom's cookies in the oven now...)
this sounds really good, but i've had such mixed (aka bad) results with store-bought gnocchi, and I don't have the patience to make it at home!
[...] Do you have a few sad looking tomatoes left on your vines? How about a farmer’s market table piled high with heirlooms? In a pinch, a store-bought basket of cherry or pear tomatoes will do. Last year, I slow-roasted halved cherry tomatoes and went to heaven. This year, in spite of a cool summer and a soil-borne disease or two, I managed to pick a few juicy tomatoes off our vines each week. But the end is near, and the harvest dwindles. I wanted to cook something that would honor those last survivors, hanging bravely on the vines, toughing out cold night winds. I found the perfect solution at In Praise of Leftovers. [...]
[...] Do you have a few sad looking tomatoes left on your vines? How about a farmer’s market table piled high with heirlooms? In a pinch, a store-bought basket of cherry or pear tomatoes will do. Last year, I slow-roasted halved cherry tomatoes and went to heaven. This year, in spite of a cool summer and a soil-borne disease or two, I managed to pick a few juicy tomatoes off our vines each week. But the end is near, and the harvest dwindles. I wanted to cook something that would honor those last survivors, hanging bravely on the vines, toughing out cold night winds. I found the perfect solution at In Praise of Leftovers. [...]
This sauce was a great way to use up the last flush of our backyard tomato plants (beefsteaks - a bumper crop this year, especially for Seattle). I used a little sage and rosemary and a LOT of basil and garlic. I personally like rustic and left the roasty skins in. I didn't have the time to make gnocchi (definitely a weekend project) or get to DiLaurentis, so I served the sauce with frozen five cheese ravioli - delightful!
HI Dan! Nice to have you here.
I've made this sauce quite a few times now, and although I admit, gnocchi is just about the best thing you can put this on, I've also been using spaghetti squash and it's amazing. Much healthier than pasta and practically tates the same when smothered in this sauce. And then I don't feel so bad using so much cheese! If all else, try the squash as the side dish and you wont feel bad when the sauce runs into it on your plate. yum!