Summer Vegetable Gratin

LESLIE BUDEWITZ: I’ve long believed it important to have friends who cook well. Not only does that make for tasty parties, you can get all kinds of ideas to recreate at home.

My friend Jan make this Summer Vegetable Gratin last winter when I visited her and her husband, Ken, in Arizona after Left Coast Crime in Phoenix. Turns out the blog where she’d found the recipe adapted it from one of my favorite sites, the ever-trustworthy Williams Sonoma blog. According to the experts at WS, the dish originates in Provence—no wonder we love it! It’s often called a tian, the French name for both a shallow earthenware casserole as well as the layered vegetables, herbs and cheeses baked in it. Unlike WS, I won’t try to sell you the casserole. And any glass or ceramic dish, roughly 8X8 or 10X10, will work beautifully. The closer and more upright you layer the veggies, the yummier.


Whether you call it a gratin or a tian, it’s an excellent side dish for salmon, chicken, or red meat.


Congratulations to Sheila Connolly for the release today of Dead End Street, her 7th Museum Mystery, and to Krista Davis for the release of The Diva Serves High Tea! 

Summer Vegetable Gratin, aka Tian

1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 large white or yellow onion, diced
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 medium zucchini, sliced 1/8-inch thick
1 medium crookneck squash, sliced 1/8-inch thick
1 medium Yukon Gold potato, sliced thinly
1-2 medium tomatoes, sliced thinly
1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh rosemary
1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh thyme or 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
1 cup grated Parmesan or Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

Preheat an oven to 350°F. Lightly coat a 2-quart baking dish with olive oil or spray with non-stick olive oil cooking spray.

In fry pan over medium heat, warm the olive oil. Add the onion and sauté until translucent, 5 to 10 minutes. Add the garlic and saute until fragrant, about one minute.

Spray or oil the baking dish. Spread the sauteed onions and garlic in the bottom of the dish. Layer the vegetables over the onions in alternating rows, close together, with each row of vegetables overlapping the previous row. Sprinkle with rosemary, thyme, and salt and pepper. Cover with a lid or foil and bake 30 minutes. Remove cover and top with cheese; bake an additional 15-20 minutes, until cheese is golden brown.

Serves 6.

From the cover of GUILTY AS CINNAMON: 

Murder heats up Seattle’s Pike Place Market in the next Spice Shop mystery from the national bestselling author of Assault and Pepper.

Pepper Reece knows that fiery flavors are the spice of life. But when a customer dies of a chili overdose, she finds herself in hot pursuit of a murderer…

Leslie Budewitz is the author of the Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries and the Spice Shop Mysteries—and the first author to win Agatha Awards for both fiction and nonfiction. The president of Sisters in Crime, she lives in northwest Montana with her husband, a musician and doctor of natural medicine, and their cat Ruff, a cover model and avid bird-watcher.

Swing by my website  and join the mailing list for my seasonal newsletter. And join me on Facebook, where I often share news of new books and giveaways from my cozy writer friends.

Tian of Winterroots

by Sheila Connolly

No, this is not a character from a George R. R. Martin book (or at least, if it is I haven’t met her yet). This is a vegetable side dish that I encountered in, yes, Ireland. But it’s French in origin, and it’s a handy kind of dish to keep in your back pocket to go with chicken or meat (no, not literally in your pocket). In my case it accompanied some really nice lamb chops. at the West Cork Hotel.

One online foodie dictionary gave this description: 

A French specialty made from a composite of ingredients that are cooked or baked.

Originally, a tian referred to a Provençal-style bake of mixed vegetables, roasted in a gratin style. The word can also be used to describe any type of casserole-style course, from a braised vegetable stew to a layered dessert.

The term was derived from the clay cooking vessel that is to prepare the dish.

I’d never heard the term tian, and when it arrived on my plate at the restaurant I quailed: there were beets. I do not like beets. I spent most of my childhood gagging over beets. Nowadays I tolerate them like a grown-up when I have no choice (I’ve even eaten them in a sandwich), but seldom if ever have I eaten them by choice, much less prepared them.

This dish may have changed my mind. I’ve always found beets cloyingly sweet, but in this case, the sugar in the beets manages to caramelize itself and create a lovely brown finish to the vegetables.

What I was served was about as simple as it could be: cubed beets and carrots. I ate all of it. Lots of recipes call for more and different vegetables, often potatoes or tomatoes or zucchini and onions, and occasionally garlic. I decided to stick to a basic version, with the beets (fresh, not canned!), carrots, and some parsnips for contrast (they taste a lot like carrots but they’re a different color). 


Tian of Winterroots, aka Roasted Root Vegetables

2 large carrots (in Ireland, that’s really large!), peeled and cut into half-inch cubes

Okay, it's a trick photo: the birds are quail. But
the carrots are big!

Here are the real ingredients

1 large or 2 small parsnips, peeled and cut into half-inch cubes

2 small (young) beets, peeled and cut into half-inch cubes

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

Chopped!

Parboil the cubed carrots and parsnips in salted water until they soften slightly (less than five minutes--do not let them cook through). Drain and let dry a bit.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F.

In a large bowl, toss all the vegetables in olive oil and season generously with salt and pepper.

In a roasting pan (use two if you need to) spread the vegetable pieces in a single layer—you don’t want the bits to be crowded. Roast until they are lightly browned and tender, about 40 minutes. You can stir them with a spatula to make sure they aren’t sticking to the pan and they cook evenly. 

Yes, they shrink when they cook

Remove from the oven and toss with additional olive oil if the bits look dry. Check for seasoning and add salt and pepper if needed.

The roasting enhances the flavor of the vegetables and turns them to a lovely brown. Yes, they may look charred, but that’s the caramelization. The vegetables are still soft and slightly sweet. Don’t overcook them or they will shrivel up and look sad. 

Feel free to experiment with different vegetables (use your judgment: snow peas and broccoli are not going to roast well!), and add herbs (fresh if you have them) if you like.

You’ll notice that all the work (the chopping) goes on at the beginning, which leaves you free to deal with the rest of your meal while the vegetables roast. Note: this recipe made enough for two or three reasonable servings, so if you’re serving a crowd, you’ll be doing a lot of chopping. But you can do that ahead, or recruit a crowd to help.

I sneaked in a new ebook! Watch for the Dead is the fourth book in the Relatively Dead series, released this week. This one's set on Cape Cod. Here's a brief description:

Looking to take a break from busy home renovations, Abby and boyfriend Ned Newhall jump at the chance to vacation on Cape Cod. Not only do they plan to get away from the dust and grime, but since Abby has no known ancestors in the area, the trip promises to be free of the unsettling ghostly appearances that have darkened her recent days.

Dreams of a relaxing vacation are soon dashed, however, when a storm blows in and brings with it a scene from the past more disturbing than any Abby has ever experienced. The long-dead woman who appears to Abby is someone she’s met before, but this time her presence defies any explanation at all.

Determined to unravel the mystery of the woman’s recurring appearances, Abby follows a trail of family history and upheaval that spans generations and may yield the biggest revelation of all, not just about Abby’s ancestors but about her living relatives as well.

 

It's available in multiple e-formats. If the holidays get to be too much for you, you can escape for a quick vacation on the Cape--with a ghost!