The usual operating rules of cooking for the blog are - photograph -upload to check there’s a useable, in focus shot etc – and all being well – then eating can begin.
Today’s dish contravened those rules. The picture may not look much, but therein lies the clue to how delicious this bake is. Drool factor was ’running’ at a level too high to allow pre-scoff photo QC.
Adapted from ‘Real Fast Vegetarian Food‘ by Ursula Ferrigno this is a downy, puffy pillow of a gratin with a red satin sheet edge, courtesy of finely chopped, fresh red chilli.
So for a 2 person gratin love-in you will need the following :
- 1 onion, half a red chilli ( remove seeds) and 1 garlic clove – all finely chopped
- 350g of fresh tomatoes ( remove seeds) – roughly chopped
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 4 fresh sage leaves – finely chopped and 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 3 eggs, forked
- 25g ricotta cheese
- 75g parmesan cheese, grated
- THEN:
- Heat the oil in a pan and gently cook the onions, garlic and chilli for 10 minutes. Add the tomatoes and cook for a further 5. Add sage, oregano, salt & pepper.
- Whilst that’s cooking, mix the ricotta and half the parmesan into the forked eggs.
- Layer the bottom of an ovenproof dish with the onion/tomato mix. Pour the eggy/cheesy mix on top of that and scatter the other half of parmesan over that.
- Bake in 180c( fan)/2ooC/ Gas Mark 6 oven for 20 minutes.
Take out of the oven, sigh and eat.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
That dish is like an optical illusion – you know the sort where you eyes can’t work out what you’re seeing, and then once you see it somehow your brain is altered forever and you can never perceive it the same way again? First it was a full dish of pink lasagne with a cracked surface to the sauce, and then when I refocused it’s now a map of the New World made with dried cheese in an empty pink dish. I think. Hmmm…
You probably didn’t want to know all that. Never mind – thanks for an interesting recipe; I might try it once the intensely-disappointing yellow brandywine actually do something other than unevenly rot or sternly refuse to ripen!
P.S. Green Grape and Cream Sausage doing fine. Yellow B needs a stern talking-to…
If I hadn’t eaten it I’d go back to see what more it might have become ! A gratin version of seeing things in the tea leaves !
But it didn’t hang round long enough to do any fortune telling ! However if I ever find pink ‘rose’ flavoured lasagne I will have to rustle up a dish to really confuse !
Yes – I am with you on the Brandywine – I have a few on 2 plants – and I can’t remember what colour they were meant to be and I am wondering if I am ever going to know…. I don’t remember coming across a variety of ‘Green Brandywine’… do you thinks its possible ?!
However pleased to hear your other colours are doing well .