What I ate: Pumpkin and Blue Cheese Gnocchi

It's that time of the week again - when you want something delicious, but you don't want to go through the hassle and production of spending the whole evening in the kitchen preparing dinner.

And let's face it - everyone wouldn't mind something new for their meals. Cooking in big batches gets rid of the need to be cooking all the time, but (I don't know about you) I tend to have a short attention span when it comes to my meals, and after the second meal of the same thing I'm off looking for other things to feed myself with.




That being said, leftovers are a wonderful thing! I like them because you can always repurpose them in creative ways for your new meal, and you can clear a few little containers of food at one go. For this speedy meal I used:

• Gnocchi (I made a large batch once and have a bag of them in my freezer. You can use bought gnocchi if you'd like)
  
• Roast pumpkin (Leftover from the weekend)
  
• Stilton Blue Cheese (I had a hunk just sitting in my fridge)
  
• Cream
  
• Truffle honey (a treat for me, any honey will do though)
  

And as with all my other What I Ate posts, there aren't any quantities. Just get creative! I boiled the gnocchi until it floated to the top of the water, drained it, then in the pot I just emptied, I warmed the pumpkin up (there was oil from the roasting already). And since the pumpkin was roasted with thyme and garlic, there's your flavour boost that's already been incorporated into the ingredient. Then I add the hot gnocchi back into the pot, add a little bit of cream, crumbled some blue cheese on the top, and drizzled some honey over just before digging in.

It was creamy and comforting, and used up stuff I just had sitting in my fridge/freezer and pantry. Don't have roast pumpkin handy? Well just about any roast root vegetables would do - I would use roast carrot, parsnips, capsicum...not so much potato though, because there are potatoes in the gnocchi. But it's completely up for interpretation! Don't like blue cheese? Add some cheddar and turn it into a gnocchi version of mac'n'cheese!

The variations are endless, and I'm no longer bored when I need to clear my fridge. Especially when I get into a cooking mood over the weekend and there are containers of random things everywhere.

What's your favourite way of using up leftovers?