Baked vegetables with a gruyere and parsley crumb

This fantastic vegetable dish was 100% inspired by fellow blogger Sam Linsell‘s brinjal & courgette bake with a garlic & parmesan crumb. Sam’s blog is called Drizzle & Dip, and she is a professional food stylist who also presented one of the food styling workshops at this year’s Food Blogger Indaba. If you visit her site, you’ll see why she’s called a pro.

After a visit to my brother-in-law’s huge vegetable garden on Sunday, I had to make use of the fantastic organic produce that he has given me: fat aubergines, lush spring onions, a pumpkin, some onions, perfect small spinach leaves and a few green peppers. Sam’s recipe for her brinjal bake was perfect, because I could adapt it to whatever I had on hand. Like Sam, I am also one of those people that process any leftover bread into crumbs and freeze it for occasions like this. Secondly, I have a recipe for a super quick and versatile spicy tomato sauce that I have published before, that worked perfectly for this dish. All I had to do was dice my veggies, fry them, toss with the sauce, top with the crumbs and bake it!

The dish is so full of flavour that you can certainly have it as a main course – I did. Add freshly cooked pasta if you want to stretch it further. Or just have it as a side dish with your main meal.

Use whatever veggies you have on hand, and use your imagination to add any other fresh herbs or cheese that you like! The ingredients below are just a guideline.

Ingredients: (all roughly diced into bite size chunks)

• 1 large aubergine (also called brinjal/eggplant)
• 2 small green peppers, diced
• 1 large onion
• a small bunch of spinach leaves
• 2 – 3 cups pumpkin or butternut
• 1 small head of broccoli
• 1 small bunch of spring onions

• salt and pepper for seasoning
• olive oil for frying

Sauce:

• spicy tomato sauce (or use any other ready-made tomato/napolitana sauce for pasta)
• 1/2 cup cream

Crumb topping:

• 3 cups white bread crumbs
• 1/2 cup finely grated Gruyère cheese (or parmesan/pecorino/grana padano)
• handful of flat leaf parsley, finely chopped (or basil/thyme/origanum)
• salt and pepper for seasoning
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• extra olive oil to drizzle on top

Method:

1. Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
2. Dice all vegetables, and quickly fry in small batches in a hot pan with olive oil, lightly colouring all the vegetables, but not fully cooking them. Season each batch lightly with salt and pepper.
3. Heat tomato sauce, add cream, and toss with the vegetables.
4. Arrange the saucy vegetables into a large ovenproof baking dish.
5. In a mixing bowl, mix breadcrumbs with grated Gruyère, chopped parsley, salt & pepper and about 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Mix well and spread evenly on top of vegetables. Lightly drizzle with extra olive oil on top.
6. Bake for around 45 minutes or untill golden and bubbly.