Dive into a rich dish of zucchini and cheese
Once you try it, you’ll find yourself making (and serving) it again and again
This summer, my sister, Mary Pat, travelled around Italy on a bike tour. One of the advantages of biking through Italy is that you can eat anything and everything you want and not worry a bit about the calories.
Turns out, my sister’s favourite dish was a healthy dish of local zucchini, tomato sauce, basil and fresh mozzarella. It was served to her in a generous square like lasagna, but instead of noodles, the layers were made up of thinly sliced zucchini.
Once she got home, she started experimenting and re-creating the dish from taste memory — and of course she told me about it! I have now made it three times. Once you make it, you will find yourself making it again and again like my sister and me. It is savory and just rich enough to be crave-able but light enough that you feel like you are eating a dish straight from the garden.
My sister urged me to add tomato paste to the crushed tomatoes to make the sauce thicker and the tomato paste also makes it more flavourful and robust. I added some seasonings to compliment the vegetables including granulated garlic and herbes de Provence. If I had had a mixture of Italian seasonings, I may have used that instead.
Either will work equally as well as they both typically include basil, rosemary and thyme.
I also added shaved Parmesan cheese to each layer as it adds a “meatiness” or umami that contributes to the savoury nature of the dish.
Before you assemble the dish, you must slice the zucchini with a mandoline and salt it to remove the excess moisture.
The slicing of the zucchini and prepping it for the casserole is a little time consuming but it is well worth the effort. It helps reduce the amount of liquid that cooks out, but it also seasons each slice of zucchini making for a perfectly balanced dish.
If you’ve made zucchini before without any salt, you know that it has a tendency to be a very bland vegetable, so this step is important. You also need to rinse the excess salt from the squash or the dish will be too salty. And, you need to dry the zucchini.
The beauty of this dish is that you can make it in advance and bake just before serving, or make it and re-heat it. It’s just as good re-heated as it is freshly made.
This weekend, I made the zucchini gratinato and served it with beer-can chicken and cornbread, it was a dinner that delivered on taste, but was easy on the cook — and that is my favourite way to eat and entertain!