Sheet-Pan Gnocchi with Mushroom Bolognese

I know what you might be thinking: Bolognese is not a sheet-pan dinner. Bolognese is not a simple dinner, a shortcut dinner, a dinner conducive to the very American instinct of under-30-minute-ing. If you’ve ever made Marcella Hazan’s famous recipe for Bolognese from Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking — the one where you and your pot sit patiently while the meat first absorbs a whole cup of wine, then a whole cup of milk, then two cups of juicy tomatoes — then you know what she says is “essential” for achieving optimum results: “The sauce must cook at the merest simmer for a long, long time. The minimum is 3 1/2 hours; 5 is better.”

Time! That’s what she’s talking about. But you know what else she’s talking about? MEAT. And even though her Bolognese is legit one of the main reasons I am not a full-fledged vegetarian, I also really crave the meaty depth of Bolognese that can sorta kinda be approximated by mushrooms and a strategically deployed supporting cast of ingredients. (As they say in therapy world, “Both things can be true!”) And maybe I can even enjoy it on a weeknight, when I do not have five hours to simmer and daydream.

Enter: Sheet-Pan Mushroom Bolognese with Gnocchi. It’s vegetarian, it’s fast, it’s one-pan. The gnocchi is roasted and crisped on the sheet pan right along with the sauce, which gets an assist from umami-rich tomato paste, dried herbs, wine if you happen to have it, and a very Marcella-esque pinch of nutmeg.

Please head over to my Substack for the recipe.

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