Hello lovelies, there are evenings when dinner should simply go into one dish and the oven should do the rest. That is exactly how these creamy baked feta gnocchi with spinach came about. Gnocchi, a whole block of feta, leaf spinach, sun-dried tomatoes and a handful of halved cocktail tomatoes go into the baking dish raw, get tossed with olive oil, oregano and garlic, and 25 minutes later out comes a gnocchi bake in which the feta has run creamy through everything and the gnocchi on top have golden patches. No pot of salted water, no draining, just one dish.
The trick that decides the whole dish sounds almost too simple, and it is this: squeeze the thawed spinach really firmly. Frozen spinach is mostly water, and if that water is released in the oven the gnocchi cook in it instead of browning. I press it out over the sieve in batches until nothing drips any more, and I am surprised every time by how much liquid comes out. After that the way is clear for golden edges.
Feta and sun-dried tomatoes
These two make the sauce without any sauce being needed. The feta does not melt away completely in the oven, it turns soft and creamy, and as soon as you stir once halfway through the baking time it runs through the spinach as a white cream. The sun-dried tomatoes in strips add the concentrated sweetness and the saltiness that picks up the mild, milky feta. In the wider recipe world the dish goes by baked feta gnocchi; at our house it is simply called the Tuesday bake.
Do use the soft chilled gnocchi from the fridge section for this recipe. They go into the dish uncooked and cook right through in the 20 to 25 minutes, while picking up exactly the golden patches that make this dish. Dried shelf-stable gnocchi, on the other hand, need a brief moment in boiling water first, otherwise they stay hard in the middle. And if you like, stir a few fresh basil leaves through at the end instead of only laying them on top.
I hope I have tempted you into a dinner that dirties exactly one dish. If you love the baked-feta wave as much as I do, do try my Vegan feta pasta deluxe, which manages entirely without cheese. The same combination of spinach, feta and tomatoes also hides in my Zucchini involtini with spinach and feta, and if you would like to make gnocchi yourself for once, my Cauliflower parsnip gnocchi are the perfect weekend project.
