Spending time in Italy during its summer, I was surrounded by an abundance of mediterranean vegetables; eggplant, tomato, capsicum, zucchini, red onion.
I thought, what better way than to combine them than in a veggie bake; although it was quite warm in Italy, the cold left-overs made for absolutely DELICIOUS lunches the following days.
Thinking about it as well, this dish really is perfect for all occasions and seasons – a winter warmer, as a side to roast or fish, and as cold left overs – like a roast veggie salad!
Take liberty to jazz it up with the flavours, herbs and spices you like the most! I love to have it with a big dollop of basil pesto .
Recipe Type: GF, DF, RSF, Paleo
Serves 4-8 (depending if it is a side or main dish)
Time 1 hour
Ingredients:
- 3 cloves garlic, crushed
- 5 T olive oil
- 1/2 tsp each salt and pepper
- 2 skinny eggplants
- 2 zucchinis (try to purchase eggplants, zucchini, carrots that are roughly the same diameter)
- 2 carrots
- 2 red onions, peeled
- 1 red capsicum
- 1 punnet cherry tomatoes
- (optional) handful of your favourite pitted olives
- (optional) 200g cooking mozzarella (the Italians would definitely use this)
Method:
- Preheat oven to 180degC.
- Whisk the oil, crushed garlic, salt and pepper together in a small bowl.
- Slice zucchinis, eggplants, carrots and onion into slices that are about 1/2-1 cm thick.
- Deseed the capsicum and slice into squares that are about the same size as the other vegetable slices.
- Assemble and align the vegetable slices into groups (one slice of eggplant, followed by zucchini, carrot, onion, capsicum) and place in a large baking dish, one after the other. You may need someone to help you so that they don’t fall over.
- If there are extra slices once the dish is full then try and squeeze them into gaps in the dish.
- Drizzle the oil/garlic mixture over all the vegetables in the dish.
- Place dish in oven and bake for 30min.
- Halve the tomatoes and slice the mozzarella if using.
- After 25min, remove the dish and top with mozzarella, tomatoes and olives.
- Return to the oven for a further 10-15 minutes
- Serve as a vegetarian main with some legumes or as a side for your meat dish. I love to have it topped with some of my basil pesto.
- Store any leftovers in an air-tight container in the fridge.