Veg-o-rama

Last night's dinner/2 servings of dessert sat like a rock in my belly, so I thought tonight's meal should be a little more figure-friendly. I worried as I was cooking Vegetable Parmesan (pg 160) that I should have also cooked a protein, but then decided that if people were still hungry, they could fill up on leftover apricot marzipan tart.

Fortunately, it turned out not to be a problem, and yes, we finished off the tart anyway. Much to my delight, we ate most of this triple layer, 9x13 veggie bonanza.

The most time-consuming part was grilling all of the vegetables before assembling the layers. You'd need an industrial-size grill to accomplish this in anything under an hour. It annoyed me. You toss sliced eggplant, fennel, and a variety of red, yellow, and orange peppers in oil, salt, and pepper, and then grill them for three minutes per side, until soft. Easy enough, but the process is looooong and boooooring because I had to do so many batches. Once it's all grilled, you layer eggplant, sauce, mozzarella, parmesan, peppers, sauce, mozzarella, parmesan, fennel, sauce, mozzarella, parmesan, and top with a cup of breadcrumbs. Drizzle with oil, and into the oven it goes.

This is all that's left!

I did not expect to be satisfied with this as an entree, but I was. Matt didn't even complain that there was no meat, though that might just have been because his parents were there. He has some strange notion that he can't get full if he doesn't eat meat. It makes no sense to me. My father-in-law seemed to love it. He went back for thirds. Maybe he was just hungry and pining for meat. Even Charlie ate some pieces of pepper. Until now, he's always spit pepper right out. 

Conclusion: Liked it. This was another success. There's a cook's note at the end of the recipe that says that the vegetables can also be baked in the oven for 15-20 minutes instead of grilling them. I'd go that route in the future, and expect that once that change is factored in, this would be a snap to make. Grilling so many batches of vegetables was a pain in the arse.