Sheet pan gnocchi with leeks is an all-in-one meal made simple

When the rush of the workweek is over, I look forward to a quiet weekend in, reading and maybe doing some watercoloring for fun. For dinner, I like to...

When the rush of the workweek is over, I look forward to a quiet weekend in, reading and maybe doing some watercoloring for fun. For dinner, I like to lean on that modern kitchen workhorse, that 18-by-13-inch tray of aluminum, the popular-but-not-pretty sheet pan.

As of this summer, I’ve been at The Washington Post for five years. Looking back, I’m proud of the work I’ve put into this newsletter, and of the hundreds of recipes I’ve developed. I’ve persuaded you to turn meaty dishes vegetarian, to lean on your cast-iron skillet, to sear and stir-fry at high heat, to broil and bake until things are crisp and almost blackened, and - maybe best of all - to do everything with flexibility, with recipes that make it easy for you to substitute ingredients that you already have in your kitchen.

What I haven’t done a lot of is the traditional sheet-pan dinner. I’ve certainly used sheet pans - to broil, bake or roast - but not usually to cook an entire meal all at once. Not like this recipe for Sheet Pan Gnocchi With Leeks, Cherry Tomatoes and Gouda, where everything goes onto the pan at the same time. It then all goes into the oven until it’s done and ready to spoon onto a plate. Not all sheet-pan recipes are this straightforward. There’s no pulling it out to flip some of the food. There’s no rotating the pan halfway through.

The idea came to me one afternoon when I was running late and trying to do too many things at the same time. My colleague Olga Massov had recently published her cookbook, "Hot Sheet,” with co-author Sanaë Lemoine. I was on maternity leave, and, most days, I was both exhausted and hungry as a wolf.

I had been clinging to cooking. It felt like a way to reconnect with my sense of self. Often, awake in the middle of the night for one reason or another, I’d bake a cake or stir together the ingredients for focaccia or start a pot of beans or peel open a few cans of tomatoes to make some sort of meaty red sauce.