For
my third culinary adventure from the Wegmans Fall Menu Cookbook, I took another
suggestion from Wegmans Regional Executive Chef Don Woods, and got to work on
the Mediterranean Harvest Gratin. This
recipe includes squash and zucchini which are locally grown, and can be found
on the Wegmans website,
or on page 59 of the Fall Menu Cookbook.
The cost of the ingredients at Wegmans came to just under $23.
I wasn’t as impressed with the quality of the
vegetables at the store as I was when I bought the produce for the Late Harvest
Veggie Pasta and the Cauliflower Soup. I
had a little more difficulty this time finding some quality squash, zucchini,
and eggplant; many of the vegetables didn’t look or feel up to par.
After
I got some produce that seemed satisfactory, I started home and busied myself
with chopping vegetables. I noticed that
this time around the cooking time that is mentioned in the recipe seemed to
include the time it took to cut the veggies.
This was not the case when I made the Late Harvest Veggie Pasta; that
meal took longer to make than it was supposed to because it didn’t take into
account the prep work for the recipe, but the Mediterranean Harvest Gratin took
about as long as the cookbook said it would. This was a very easy recipe to make, and once
the veggies are sliced up, there’s really very little work that needs to be
done. It’s really just a matter of arranging the
casserole, and topping it with the tomato sauce, letting it bake a while, and
then spreading the ricotta on top. That’s
pretty much all there is to it.
I
used more tomato sauce and cheese than the recipe called for because I was
going for a sort of eggplant parmesan effect.
I apparently failed at this, because when I invited my mom to try some
of it, she said that she likes eggplant parmesan better. I, however, decided not to take this as a
personal assault on my cooking abilities, and instead tried to dig to the
bottom of this issue. Why did she like
eggplant parmesan better?
We both
finally agreed that this recipe was just missing something. It’s a good recipe, and I thought that adding
more sauce and cheese had given it more taste, but I feel like this recipe
could still use something extra. My mom
and I kicked around some ideas and we decided that this recipe could be made
better either by adding another cheese, like mozzarella or grated
parmesan, or by adding more spices to it, like oregano. I would say that this is a good recipe that
could simply be made by better by a couple extra additions. My one complaint was that the eggplant seemed
to come out very dry, and I don’t know if that was my fault or the recipe’s, but
the squash and zucchini came out really well.
This recipe definitely earned some extra credit because it is both
healthy and versatile. As it says on the Wegmans website, these vegetable gratins can easily be served as
either an appetizer or an entrée, and this one was cheap and easy to make. My last post on the Fall 2009 Menu recipes is
going to be on another one of these vegetable gratins: the Butternut Squash,
Apple, and Gorgonzola Gratin