If you're looking for the ultimate comfort meal after work, this is it - our broccoli and blue cheese gnocchi bake.
We've used pre-made gnocchi which speeds this recipe up and combined them with broccoli, a homemade cheese sauce (which is way easier than it sounds and you can follow our how-to video for a fool proof method), crumbled Stilton (or any other blue cheese you'd like), fresh quartered figs and topped with plenty of Parmesan on top.
It's creamy, cheesy, salty, sweet and decadent. Plus, it can be on your table in under an hour so makes a great midweek meal.
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Yields:
4
Prep Time:
20 mins
Cook Time:
30 mins
Total Time:
50 mins
Cal/Serv:
669
Ingredients
300g
broccoli florets
500g
pack gnocchi
50g
butter
50g
plain flour
500ml
milk
125g
vegetarian blue cheese, crumbled into 1cm pieces
4 fresh figs, halved
1Tbsp.
grated vegetarian Parmesan-style cheese
Directions
Step 1
Preheat oven to 180°C (160°C) mark 4. Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil and cook broccoli for 3min. Lift out with a slotted spoon on to kitchen paper. Add gnocchi to pan and boil for about 40sec or until they bob to surface. Drain and leave to dry.
Step 2
Melt the butter in the empty pan over medium heat. Add the flour and cook, stirring, for 1min. Remove from heat and gradually whisk in the milk until smooth. Return to heat and cook, whisking, until thickened – about 3min. Stir in most of the blue cheese to melt. Check the seasoning.
Step 3
Pour half the sauce into a 1.6 litre (23/4 pint) ovenproof dish. With more kitchen paper, blot excess moisture from broccoli and scatter it into dish with the gnocchi and figs. Top with the remaining sauce and blue cheese, and the Parmesan-style cheese.
Step 4
Cook in the oven for 20min until bubbling and golden. Serve with a green salad, if you like.
Freeze ahead - Make to end of step 4. Cool completely, cover in foil and freeze for up to 3 months. To serve, defrost overnight in fridge. Cook (still covered) in an oven preheated to 180°C (160°C fan) mark 4 for 30min, then remove foil and cook for 10min more, until bubbling and golden.
An experienced and highly skilled team of food writers, stylists and digital content producers, the Good Housekeeping Cookery Team is a close-knit squad of food obsessives. Cookery Editor Emma Franklin is our resident chilli obsessive and barbecue expert, who spends an inordinate amount of time on holidays poking round the local supermarkets seeking out new and exciting foods. Senior Cookery Writer Alice Shields is a former pastry chef and baking fanatic who loves making bread and would have peanut butter with everything if she could. Her favourite carb is pasta, and our vibrant green spaghetti is her weeknight go-to. Lover of all things savoury, Senior Cookery Writer Grace Evans can be found eating crispy corn and nocellara olives at every opportunity, and will take the cheeseboard over dessert any time (though she cannot resist a slice of tres leches cake). With a wealth of professional kitchen know-how, culinary training and years of experience between them, they are all dedicated to ensuring every Good Housekeeping recipe is the best it can be, so you can trust they’ll work (and if they don’t – we’ll have the answer for why*) every time (*90% of the time the answer is: “buy an separate oven thermometer”!).
