I cranked up the pizza oven last weekend when we had friends from out of town come to stay – cooking a dinner out of the pizza oven (that isn’t pizza) is always so much fun with guests. On the menu? This Burst Tomato Gnocchi w/Melty Mozzarella + Torn Greens that our friend Matt inspired me to make. He has a pizza oven too + has been trying all sorts of things in it — but this one, he said, took the cake. A riff on a sheet pan recipe he’d found on Bon Appetit, it was the perfect pizza oven recipe because everything came together on the same pan (or, in this case, the same cast iron skillet.) So, I gave it a whirl.
While the sun set, I sautéed shallots and baby tomatoes with spices, salt + pepper until they broke down and became a jammy sauce in which to cook the fresh gnocchi. Then I added little balls of mozzarella, and a few handfuls of torn fresh herbs and arugula. The fire in the oven was ripping hot, so when the little noodles got a bit of char on them (amazing,) I pulled the whole skillet from the oven – a sizzling, fragrant, gooey, grounding mess of all the summer things that are good right now. We devoured it, and I cataloged the recipe for prosperity under “amazing things to cook outside with friends.”
But then late this week, I had the occasion to pack up the van and head up into the mountains to do a little work (bikes, food, photographs, the usual.) I didn’t have much time to menu-plan, but I did have a few leftover ingredients from the magical tomato-gnocchi meal in the fridge, so I packed them up and brought them with. If this meal could also be made in a van with minimal cooking equipment, it would become a true star in my cooking notebook.
Sometime in the early evening, as my work was wrapping up, it began to drizzle. And then, it began to rain and I got hungry. I donned my sweatpants and cranked up the propane stove, and got to cooking.
While the rain fell, I sautéed tomatoes and a nubbin of shallot until it became a jammy sauce. Then I added a handful of gnocchi to cook in the juices, a few little balls of mozz and a little handful of torn greens and herbs. A chilly summer night in the mountains became a cozy night in the van, thanks to this recipe that apparently can be made anywhere, in anything, for all of the extroverted and introverted reasons.
I’m excited to share it with you this week because I can’t think of a better recipe to exemplify that you don’t have to have fancy equipment to cook well. You don’t need to have a lot of ingredients, though your meals will be best if you have a small handful of great ones. And, you don’t need to be a master chef to turn even the most awkward situation and make something great. But you do need to have the intention to try – and that’s everything.
THIS IS THE TIME FOR TOMATOES. Eat them now while they’re ripe AF, and ignore them during the other parts of the year when they’re coming from all over the world and taste like water. I mean it. Tomatoes out of season are completely worthless. But these tomatoes? The right now kind? Are GOLDEN.
It’s worth adding here that tomatoes are actually a sour flavor, more than they are sweet. They aggravate pitta but they cool the blood. And, as a nightshade, they’re filled with seeds that contain lectins. These lectins (like the phytic acid that coats seeds, grains, nuts and legumes) are biotoxins that are challenging for us to digest UNLESS we remove the seeds, or cook the tomatoes. Otherwise, the acid is guaranteed to be a little too much for our digestive systems to handle.
In the recipe below, you’re going to cook the tomatoes until they’re literally falling apart and have made a nice jammy little sauce of their very own. (A highly digestible, far less acidic sauce to be sure.)
I’ve made this dish in a fancy pizza oven, and in a simple skillet on a propane stove in a van. This is to say that you could also make it in your oven at home, or on the stovetop no matter where you are.
It’s highly versatile, and I’ll leave it up to you how you choose to make it all go down and it’s going to be awesome because – without me hand holding you through each step for each cooking aparatus, you’re going to make it happen by watching the signs in the skillet. It’s going to be so great! All you need to pay attention to are the ingredients you’re cooking with. Have the tomatoes become jammy? Are the gnocchi tender? The cheese melty? The greens wilty? Yes – you’ve crushed it.
A few tips for each of the recommended cooking apparatus:
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