Friday night dinner recap

In all the excitement over Smokey Bear I hadn't gotten around to the post about our dinner Friday night. Once again I was faced with an overwhelming amount of produce at the end of the week that needed to be used before our weekly trip to the farmers' market. The bounty included 3 zucchini, 2 eggplant, and several tomatoes. So I did a quick search on Epicurious and found a recipe for Eggplant, Zucchini, Red Pepper and Parmesan Torte. How perfect was that? Not to mention people had give in great reviews.

The only concern I had was that a majority of reviewers said that it was time intensive. Not at all daunted by "time intensive" (after all this is the woman who roasted, ground, and dried two pounds of beets for beet powder as a salad garnish), I started dinner at about 3:45 and had it on the table by 6:30, but I was pretty leisurely about it. If pressed I think I could have made it happen in a little over an hour.

But here is my review: YUMMY! The eggplant, zucchini, and red pepper are roasted in the oven then layered along with a delicious Parmesan custard and crushed tomato sauce. There are several short cuts you could take: using jarred sauce, roasting all the vegetables at once instead of individually, and doing all of that ahead of time and assembling just before baking. Also, as a note, in case you are considering making it, I halved everything except the custard. Big J and I ate about 1/3 for Friday night dinner and there was enough left over for lunch on both Saturday and Sunday. I also used a deeper pan than called for.

This is a definitely keeper!