the review: honey roasted veggies with gnocchi

I have adored Elsie and Emma’s blog A Beautiful Mess for a long time. It is bright and cheery and their DIY projects are fantastic. I have never cooked something from the blog, although why that is I have no idea (take a look at this). On Tuesday night, I ventured into the kitchen to cook Emma’s honey roasted veggies with gnocchi. All four of the teens at the table loved it. It even had a vote of confidence from one of two preschoolers.

This recipe is designed to be a simple, weeknight meal and it succeeds. Your cut vegetables are tossed with olive oil and honey, then roasted for 30 minutes or so. To stretch the meal, I added some carrot sticks here, but did not increase the oil/honey mixture. Do season your vegetables well with salt and pepper as both cauliflower and Brussels sprouts tend to need the seasoning. While the vegetables were roasting, I cooked my gnocchi (argh! store bought rather than homemade due to lack of time, but no complaints from most of the kids), chopped the garlic, and rinsed off a can of cannellini beans to add protein. I added my beans into the butter/garlic combination when I added the gnocchi (I used two packs instead of one as directed, but again, did not alter the other ingredients) and let those sauté together for a couple of minutes before tossing the whole shebang in with the roasted vegetables. We served this with a bit of lemon (a touch of which I added before serving) and grated pecorino.

Let me remind you that I am feeding teenagers here. We also grilled chicken to go with this dish because I was afraid that there wouldn’t be enough. And by “we” grilled chicken, I mean one of the kids seasoned the chicken and one of the kids grilled it. Start to finish, no help. My 15 year-old grill master. The chicken was delicious. Perfectly cooked, great flavor. I know I sound like a broken record here, but this is why you start cooking with your kids as early as possible. Isn’t it nice to see some area of parenting actually pay off? I digress. As usual.

So the kids ate this gnocchi and the vegetables and they loved it. We may have enough leftovers for a bit of lunch. I will say that it was a bit too sweet for me, but I would make it again in a heartbeat to watch those kids eat vegetables like it is going out of style. We will definitely be adding this dish to the rotation. But I might just have to make my own gnocchi next time.