Gratin with onion, eggplant, peppers, fennel, summer squash, tomatoes, herbs and cheese
Sometimes bitter, sometimes tasteless, but almost always slimy, especially deep-fried with a greasy coating, eggplant has always been right up there with beets and okra on the short list of vegetables I really, really dislike. I even hate the name “eggplant,” although I love “aubergine,” the French name.
The plants are attractive, though, the fruits beautiful, and I’m a sucker for attractive plants with beautiful fruits, so that’s why I have eggplant on hand in spite of my dislike for it.
I’ve been reading the blogs of Ken and Walt, Americans who live in my favorite part of the Loire Valley in France, for years now. (They live only a few km from the place where we love to stay in the Loire, so we were lucky to spend some time with them on our last visit in 2007.) I have always marveled at their blog posts about the wonderful food they cook, so I paid attention when Ken commented on my recent post about my eggplant problem and suggested a gratin recipe.
I was starting with too big a gratin dish and too few eggplants, so I when I roasted the eggplant slices ahead of time, I also roasted a couple of thick-sliced sweet Walla Walla onions, two big red bell peppers and one yellow one, and a couple of fennel bulbs. Then I layered it all into the gratin dish: onions first, then eggplant, chunks of roasted pepper, a generous sprinkling of fresh thyme leaves, grated mozzarella, then fennel, a few summer squash, and a layer of thickly sliced tomatoes. I topped it all with more mozzarella, more thyme, and a drizzle of olive oil. After an hour in a 400-degree oven, I added freshly grated parmesan and lots of torn basil leaves, turned off the oven and let it continue to cook down for another 30 minutes or so as the oven cooled off. With a crusty baguette and glass of rose, it was dinner.
Now. Given those ingredients, this couldn’t be bad, but I fully expected to pick out the eggplant and eat the rest. Instead, the silky–not slimy–slightly sweet flesh of the aubergine was my favorite part of a really delicious dish!
I’ve made vegetable gratins before, but my results have always been sort of ho-hum. I think the difference this time was roasting the vegetables ahead of time for more flavor and using more cheese instead of just a perfunctory sprinkling of parmesan.
Thanks, Ken! The recipe will be fun to play with all summer, varying the herbs, cheese, and selection of vegetables. Whatever else I do, next time I’ll use more eggplant aubergine.
Good, Chris. Glad it worked out. Of course, I’m a person who love eggpl… oops, aubergine, okra, and beets. Makes life a lot easier.
Janice (and everyone else), I made this again last weekend and made a couple of discoveries. I didn’t have fennel on hand, so I left that out, and I was a little stingier with the fresh thyme. It’s still good, but not nearly as good as the first batch. Lots and LOTS of thyme to perfume it all may be the answer although I missed the roasted fennel as well.
Janice, I know what you mean about the need to return. My first visit to Provence was bit of a disaster for a variety of reasons, but there was something that called me back. This time will be my 7th, and I feel like I’m just scratching the surface of the things I want to see and know and experience there. A long visit would be more efficient, but I’m not willing to leave my loved ones at home for more than a couple of weeks.
Thank you for the step by step, Chris. I’m going to the farm stand tomorrow to buy the veggies and then attempt to replicate that gorgeous gratin.
I returned to your blog this morning to steal some ideas for a new garden I’m designing for our river cabin. Haven’t made it past the posts about your summer harvest.
I’m looking forward to your posts from Provence in the fall. I want to return to that region some day soon. I’ve only been once, September, about 3 years ago, and came home with mixed feelings about my travels. The language barrier was a bit of an issue and I know now that I had an unrealistic expectation about the terrain and food.
Daily I walk past my little stand of lavender and I am transported back to that week in late September when everything and every place seemed infused with that heady, herbal scent. I feel a need to return and will devour your posts so that I may be a better, wiser traveler.
Can’t wait for my garden to catch up so that I can try your gratin recipe and several versions thereof.
I love to grow the dark (aubergine) eggplant, not only to use in recipes but to polish them with a little olive oil and incorporate them into large arrangements. Aubergines last many weeks if their skin is first covered with olive oil.
Gina
Chris,
I feel the same way about eggplant, so I definitely want to try your gratin with roasted veggies. Besides sounding delicious, it is beautiful! So colorful!
I think we have two kinds of eggplant (maybe 3), but they are not ripe quite yet. I will let you know how it goes.
Nancy
Dino says he wants to make this! Yea! It looks amazing.
I’ve never cooked with golden beets. I’ve had them in restaurants a few times and they weren’t bad. I’m always tempted to buy the chiogga beets just because they’re so pretty. Red beets taste to me like slimy mud mixed with sugar. Not that I’ve ever tasted that, even in my mud pie days.
That sounds delicious, and the technique of roasting the vegetables first is genius.
And as we speak, I have eggplant and sweet red peppers grilling, destined for a salad tonight with basil and chevre.
*Pouts* Nobody but me likes beets. Have you tried golden beets? They’re more delicate in flavor.