Though it’s my favourite meal of the day, I struggle to approach dinner with any conceptual normalcy, probably partly driven by not having to account for anyone’s tastes but my own. What do I mean by this? It might only make sense in my head, but you may notice a lack of everyday, meal-prep-food-kit-type practicality to the recipes on here. I favour a certain abstraction and loose formlessness and outsized abundance when it comes to dinner, and of course am perpetually hostile to the kind of SEO that other food blogs blandly benefit from. Hence all the big plates of pasta or dishes that could be sides consumed as the meal in their entirety. The closest I get to traditional friendly dinner recipes are still vast and singular: this hands-free black bean and brown rice casserole or my sheet pan gnocchi puttanesca. Somewhere in the middle of the nebulous and the breezily circumspect sits this recipe for instant gnocchi, big beans, and red chilli pesto sauce.

Even the ‘instant’ promise of the title is a little insouciant, in that the truly instant thing to do would be to simply buy gnocchi, but it’s about as close as you can get and I am always, always ready to revisit one of my rare strokes of genius that might actually be genius to a broader audience and not just to the hypothetical audience applauding on loop in my head. The genius bit? Using instant mashed potato flakes as the base. You stir together some ingredients, roll it out haphazardly, slice it up at intervals, and there’s your gnocchi, like sturdy little packing peanuts, and you’ve barely had to engage plural brain cells.

The accompanying titular beans are large on purpose, to create a little trompe l’oeil effect both visually and under the tooth — if you can find larger beans than mine then please, go ahead. The merging of textures is also pleasing; bouncy and crisp-edged against fudgy and dense.

But really this starts and ends with the sauce — you could use all gnocchi or all beans, for that matter, as long as you have this sauce with the sweetness of roasted peppers and splintered almonds, the glossy richness of sundried tomatoes, and the fireside warmth of smoked paprika and chilli flakes. As well as being delicious, it’s also easy — a few quick turns in the food processor and it’s all yours.

As far as dinners go, this is both soothing yet dignified, dishevelled yet distinguished, with the gnocchi and beans paddling merrily in their sauce. Gnocchi is always going to be pure comfort — why, it’s shaped like the very pillow that you yearn to fall into and nap on uninterrupted — and something about making it yourself in under ten minutes feels like sussing out how a magic trick works but still getting to be surprised at the rabbit emerging from the hat. Despite the breezily midsummer warmth of the basil and vibrant red colour, this really is a midwinter pesto, with its reliance on jarred and preserved produce and its glowing yet gentle heat. The promise of distant and imminent bounty, the convenience of shelf-stable ingredients, the opportunity to boast that you made your own gnocchi, now that’s my idea of a practical dinner.

As I said, I proudly stand by my instant gnocchi recipe and have replicated it a couple of times, but you might as well consult my original iteraton while you’re here as it has more detailed instructions — and what is a genius notion without its ur-text?

Instant gnocchi, big beans, and red chilli pesto sauce

Now admittedly this is a lot more instant if you use packaged gnocchi, and you’re absolutely welcome — encouraged, even! — to do so, if it hastens your path to this smoky-spicy delicious dish. Note: I find it easier to measure the gnocchi ingredients in cups, then everything else in grams, I am sorry for the inconvenience but somehow it doesn’t work all one way or the other. Recipe by myself, based on another recipe by myself.

Instant gnocchi

• 3/4 cup instant mashed potato flakes
• 3/4 cup freshly boiled water
• A generous pinch of salt
• 1 and 1/4 cups plain flour
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 60ml cold water or stock of your choice
• 1 x 400g tin butter beans or other large beans

Red chilli pesto

• 200g jarred roasted red peppers (about two whole roasted peppers)
• 50g drained sundried tomatoes
• 2 garlic cloves
• 40g basil leaves and stems (saving a few leaves for garnish)
• 70g slivered almonds
• 1 tablespoon hulled tahini (optional)
• 40g parmesan
• 1 teaspoon red chilli flakes
• 1 teaspoon smoked paprika

1: Get started on the gnocchi. Place the 3/4 cup instant mashed potato flakes in a mixing bowl and stir in the 3/4 cup boiling water (or wait while the jug boils, if you haven’t heated it up already) along with the pinch of salt. The hot water turns the potato flakes into mashed potato; next stir in the 1 and 1/4 cups flour, letting it cool slightly before gently kneading the mixture until it forms a ball of soft, pliant dough, this should take barely thirty seconds. Leave aside to cool a little further.

2: Divide the dough into about four pieces, roll them out into long snakes, and slice at one-inch intervals to make gnocchi that look like tiny, plump pillows.

3: Warm up the tablespoon of olive oil in a wide frying pan over a medium heat. Fry the gnocchi in one layer on one side, tipping them over one by one and allowing to brown on the other side. Once you’ve turned the gnocchi, tip in the 60ml water or stock and let it bubble up, absorb, and evaporate.

4: While this is happening – perhaps while you’re waiting for the dough to cool — place all the pesto ingredients in a food processor, that is, the 200g jarred roasted red peppers, the 50g sundried tomatoes, the 2 garlic cloves, 40g basil stems and leaves, and 70g slivered almonds, the tablespoon of tahini if you’re using it, the 40g parmesan cheese — roughly crumble or chop it first — and the teaspoon each of chilli flakes and smoked paprika. Blend until it forms a textured red sauce.

5: Nearly there. Once the gnocchi is cooked, drain the liquid from the can of beans and tip the beans into the pan, stirring to warm them through. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the sauce.

Serve immediately, scattered with the roughly chopped remaining basil leaves, perhaps with another smattering of chilli flakes — a swirl of olive oil wouldn’t go amiss either.

Serves 2.

Notes:
– The hulled tahini adds a little extra body and richness; if you’re skipping the parmesan then I’d increase the tahini to two tablespoons.
– I used gochugaru for the chilli flake component as I have a massive bag of them, use whichever chilli flakes you like and have to hand.

music lately:

Star by Jesu. Somehow manages to sound ethereal and like you’re having a punch-up with a washing machine simultaneously; my brother recommended this band to me and as usual he was correct.

Hurricane Drunk by Florence and the Machine; a kind of opulent, rain-soaked streetlit nihilistic companion to Robyn’s neon Dancing on My Own; I recently heard this again as part of a lights out album listening event and there really is something about solemnly absorbing an album in pitch black silence that lends it extra piquancy.

Goodbye Horses by Q Lazzarus. Always perfect, so perfect it’s almost hard to fathom that it simply — exists!

When Will You Come Home, by Galaxie 500, anthemically woebegone in a way that makes every pitiable emotion charging through you feel monumentally profound; the way the guitar builds in the back third is as powerful as drinking four pints of coffee in brisk succession.

PS: As I’ve said previously, ReliefAid’s Gaza Appeal is important to me. Their team, through perishingly difficult circumstances, are on the ground trying to help. It’s been a while since their last update at the end of May but if you’re looking for relief effort to support, I suggest them as a starting point.