Recently I've been on the prowl for recipes to add to my cookbook I am making for my personal use and to obviously share with all of you! I came across this recipe on Pinterest and it lead me to The Blond Cook. I knew this was just the dish I needed to add to my recipe book, and after trying it out last night, it certainly will be staying put in there.
If you're looking for a delicious vegetable side dish to enjoy at dinner on a warm summer evening, I've got just the recipe for you. Keep on reading to learn how you can make this simple but delicious dish.
First off, we'll need to start with what you'll need for this recipe:
Once you have your ingredients, light up your stove top and sauté your onions and minced garlic with olive oil until the aroma fills up your apartment (who doesn't love the smell of garlic). I made the rookie move of not owning a mincer, so I chopped up the garlic as finely as I could. Lesson learned, I'm going out today to buy a mincer, lol! After they've sauteed enough, evenly spread them out in a casserole dish. I don't own a round one, but a rectangle one worked perfectly fine.
You'll then want to start arranging your thinly cut vegetables over the mixture. Try your best to arrange them in a pattern so that you have an even amount of vegetables in each bite. After making this recipe, here's a tip: get smaller tomatoes so that you don't run out like I do and count how many sliced rounds you have of each vegetable. This will make for it to be aesthetically pleasing and so you don't have more of something than another. My dish had way more squash than it did tomatoes.
After they're arranged oh-so-beautifully, sprinkle it with as much seasoning as you'd like: Italian seasoning, pepper, and salt. Then cover it with aluminum and stick it in the oven for 30 minutes at 400ºF.
Second to last step, is to remove it from the oven, sprinkle a generous amount of mozzarella cheese on it, and stick it back in the oven for another 15 minutes or until the cheese is a gooey, glorious golden brown. The recipe calls for Italian cheese, but I had mozzarella already and it was still delicious. The recipe also calls for only a cup of cheese, but if you're like me and my boyfriend, Ben, you'll pile it on!
Now, the best step, serve and enjoy! We had cooked some chicken earlier in the week, so we served it with that. It was amazing and definitely filling.
Let me know in the comments below if you choose to make this and if you've altered the recipe anyway like I have.
