MEALS AS EASY AS 2023
Happy New Year to friends old and new!! We made it to 2023—ain’t life grand? It’s already a whirlwind, since Anthony was on Good Morning America this Tuesday (watch it here), and we’ve got lots of travel on the books in the coming weeks! Hope you are enjoying a fresh start to the year and are ready to get cookin’ in the kitchen. We’ve got two super-easy, crowd pleasing recipes on deck for you today!
SHEET PAN SAUSAGE, GNOCCHI & VEGGIES
AU: Want a recipe that is practically mindless and 90% hands off, but delivers tenfold in the flavor department? (Hint: the answer is always YES). I’m so glad, because that’s exactly what my Sheet Pan Sausage, Gnocchi & Veggie dinner will deliver!
If you’ve followed our newsletter for a while, you know we both love a sheet pan meal (Sheet Pan Shrimp “Stir Fry”, Butterflied Chicken Dinner, Gnocchi Amatriciana, Crispy Brussels Sprouts with Bacon).
AU: No other method of cooking is easier! It’s almost like a slow-cooker, but everything’s CRISPY-DOT-COM instead of soupy. And it’s easy to double up for a larger crowd.
EK: This is my kind of dinner. I love that is is easy to make and is an all-in-one tangy, flavor-rich meal. Plus it has Broccoli! Roasting Broccoli is so much better than steaming it (IMHO), and that texture is a nice counterpoint to the rest of the ingredients.
AU: This week’s recipe takes a cue from my Sheet Pan Gnocchi Amatriciana meal, and uses shelf-stable prepared gnocchi. These lil pillowy bites become satisfyingly chewy and crispy when cooked in the oven, and maybe that’s why I love ‘em so much. But those aren’t the only store-bought ingredients…
AU: In an effort to make something that requires minimal chopping, stirring, and FUSSIN’… I realllllllly leaned into pre-made ingredients: Using pre-cooked chicken sausages takes the guess work out of knowing if the meat is cooked through, and pre-chopped broccoli florets that you can just break apart with your fingers eliminates the still-confounding way broccoli scatters like confetti all over my kitchen.
Here’s how it all comes together: First thing you’ll need is a really hot oven. We’re going to really load this sheet pan up, which is normally a bad thing (if your goal is to have crispy results), but we want a combination of crispy and tender, so it all works out in the end. A hot oven—425ºF—will ensure we get the perfect combo of both.
Remove the pre-cooked sausages from the packaging and pat dry if they’re damp. Do the same thing with the feta—just blot it on some paper towels. Slice the sausages and a red onion into 1/4” thick slices. The tomatoes and sliced onions will meld together on the sheet pan to create a sort-of-sauce®.
Get out a big ol’ bowl, and combine the gnocchi, tomatoes, onions, chili flakes (if you want it spicy), and sliced sausages with a couple of glugs of olive oil. Toss to coat everything generously. Spread it all out on a rimmed baking sheet, and don’t wash the bowl (you’re going to use it again—less labor, more flavor, please!). Now take the feta and just break it into chunks, distributing it evenly over the ingredients on the sheet pan.
AU: While that’s in the oven, open up your package of broccoli florets. Whenever I open a package of these things, I always wonder why some are the perfect size and then you always have THAT ONE BIG FLORET. WHY?!?! It’s infuriating. So break that guy up with your fingers—you want everything to be about one-inch-ish (a very exact measurement). Throw them into your unwashed mixing bowl, drizzle with a little more olive oil and season with salt and pepper. After the rest of the gang has been in the oven for 25 minutes, stir them up, top with the broccoli florets, and return the whole thing to the oven for another 15 minutes.
AU: You want the broccoli to be tender and the sausage should be crispy around the edges, but not too dried out. Toss everything on the sheet pan to combine. The tomatoes will have released their juices and combined with the melted onions and feta to create, again, a sort-of-sauce®.
AU: It’s absolutely customary—mandatory, actually—that you pick off the crispiest gnocchi and sausage piece from the pan to eat yourself. It’s the cook’s treat and everyone else can mind their own binness!
AU: Serve up this mostly-hands-off meal on a busy weeknight and feel like a superhero in your own home. Honestly, it’s so easy, you can outsource this to the least-skilled cook in your household. Enjoy!
SPANAKOPITA EGG BITES
EK: I don’t know why, but I have had Spanakopita on the brain lately. Maybe it’s because I tried a new Greek restaurant and ordered it but it was mostly dough—not even phyllo—and only a smattering of the spinach filling that I love much! So, I basically left unsatisfied:)
AU: I’m not Greek, but I’m pretty sure that’s sacrilege.
EK: Right?!! For me, that spinach filling seasoned with onions, garlic, scallions, feta and fresh thyme is what I crave. The phyllo or other dough is just the vehicle to hold it. So that got me to thinking, what if I made a mini muffin frittata stuffed with a spinach “Spanakopita” filling? That’s how I created my Spanakopita Egg Bites.
And, guess what?! They are perfect for the new year because they are healthy-ish!
As you can see from the photograph, these are egg bites that are three quarters spinach filling and 1/4 egg mixture. For me, this is a perfect ratio and my recipe makes 12 perfect egg bites. If you are more into the egg and want them 50-50, you can just double the egg mixture from this recipe! It’s up to you, customize it as you like (speaking of which, I think some sautéed mushrooms would be a nice addition even though they are not part of a traditional Spanakopita).
The filling is very simple to make.The hardest part is planning in advance. You want to make the spinach filling at least an hour in advance (or even the night before), so that it can cool down before you add the egg mixture.
Basically, you sweat an onion in olive oil with sliced garlic and a healthy pinch of salt on medium-low heat. You can slice the onions however you like because they essentially melt into the spinach.
My trick is to put the lid on a heavy-duty 5-quart pot to expedite the cooking, and also make sure that the garlic steams and dissolves into the mixture of onions. After about 10 minutes, the onions and garlic are soft and translucent. I add the scallions and stir for 1-2 minutes until they are soft, but still bright green.
Then I add the spinach in two batches. Anyone who cooks fresh spinach knows that the pot can hardly contain the leaves at first and when they wilt, you are left with just a little bit of cooked spinach. That’s why you have to do it in 2 batches.
AU: Spinach and other leafy greens really are the Houdini’s of the kitchen—where does it all go?!?
EK: Haha! I think that every time I sauté spinach!
Once the greens are cooked through, I add cubed feta, parmesan cheese and a little grated mozzarella (this adds “stickiness” and body to the spinach filling). Traditional Spanakopita uses eggs to hold it together. But since we are baking it in eggs, I use grated mozzarella to loosely hold it together. The cheeses will melt a little as you mix everything together, ensuring that all the flavors are evenly mixed through the filling. As it cools down, they will meld into the spinach and become a de facto sauce, a.k.a. Anthony’s a sort-of-sauce®.
EK: Now it’s time for the the fun part! I love this assembly. It’s easy and satisfying. Because the spinach mixture is my favorite part, I divide the filling equally between my 12 muffin cups (but you could stretch it to make 24). Then I pour the egg mixture on top. At this point, the spinach is cool and set, so you have to stir each individual egg cup gently with a fork to make sure the egg mixture surrounds the spinach. You can see spinach peeking out in the second photo. If you don’t stir, it won’t cook evenly. That’s all there is to it!
If you’ve made egg cups before with drier ingredients, you will notice that these take about twice as long to bake, because the spinach mixture is so wet. But you will know they are done when they puff up and look like little soufflés. They took about 45 minutes to bake in my oven.
They look so beautiful puffed up and brown in the oven. I failed to take a great photo that really represented how gorge they look… But, for a point of reference, they are about 10 minutes from being done in this photo.
I hope that you enjoy them as much as I did. You can make them and re-heat them for a quick breakfast or lunch. Refrigerate the leftovers and reheat in the toaster oven, microwave or even an air fryer! I even made one into an egg sandwich by putting it between a toasted English muffin!
So I guess I really do need to get a air fryer/rapid cooker! Even in a tiny NYC apartment I must make counter space. Anthony was super cute on GMA (“ 2 pounds of crispy deliciousness” ) and EAK is always right with this comment: “roasting broccoli is so much better than steaming it (IMHO)” agreed!
These are fantastic recipes! As the taste tester, I can tell you the sheet pan gnocchi heats up so well as leftovers--and I can’t wait to take the egg bites in my lunch for work! So portable!