Summer Vegetable Tian from Every Day Dorie

Hello! I am finally back at it with #cookthebookfridays! I missed joining in the fun over the past few months as it has been a bit crazy with us moving back from Ottawa to Edmonton (in the middle of a lockdown pandemic!) and then finding our own place to live again. After a few months it is nice to have our own place again to cook and make desserts.

Dorie's Summer Vegetable Tian was the main star for tonight's dinner. It was prepped relatively quickly even though it involved a cornucopia of summer veggies. We put in eggplant, tomatoes, zucchini and mushrooms, a few good tablespoons of good extra virgin olive oil on the bottom of the dutch oven, along with fresh herbs, salt and pepper. While it shares the same set of veggies as a ratatouille, Dorie says a good tian has lots of oil and the veggies should be melting and bordering on jam-like consistency.

To make a vegetable tian preheat the oven to 400F. Then coat the bottom of the dutch oven with a few good tablespoons of olive oil. Then generously add salt, cracked pepper, fresh basil and sliced garlic. We also had chopped onions on the bottom of our dish as we had some left over from another dinner dish.

All the veggies are sliced to about 1/4 inch thick. Then the sliced eggplant, tomatoes, zucchini, and mushrooms are all layered and nestled into each other. Dorie suggests sandwiching the eggplant slices between slices of tomatoes. Ensure that all the veggies are tightly overlapping each other in a spiral.

The hardest part was waiting for the entire vegetable tian to bake! It smelled amazing as it sat bubbling in the oven. It took almost 2 hours in order for the vegetables to be bubbling, tender and juicy.

This recipe turned out really well. I loved how all veggies roasted together creating the most amazing aromas. We were a bit surprised that the two of us finished the entire dish when it was meant for four people. We will definitely make this again as it was so simple and so delicious. Next time, we will have to make sure that Dan has a fresh loaf of sourdough ready so that we can enjoy it with the vegetable tian. 

You find find the recipe for Dorie's Summer Vegetable Tian here. Alternatively, you can also purchase the cookbook yourself and find this recipe on page 234! Go check out the Cook the Book Fridays page to see how everyone else did with this recipe, their thoughts and of course the pictures!