Transcript

Char-grilled vegetable stack

Feeds 6 hungry folks

1 cup polenta
2 cups vegetable stock
Good knob of butter
1 onion chopped
1 red capsicum
Handful button mushrooms
1 zucchini
Few slices of butternut pumpkin
1 eggplant
2 cans chopped tomatoes
1/3 cup red wine
2 cloves garlic
Large knob mozzarella cheese
Small tub Ricotta cheese
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
Chopped fresh basil
Method

Make polenta by sweating onion in olive oil, adding stock and bringing to boil. On a low heat drizzle polenta in stirring vigorously to keep a smooth paste. Add butter and salt and pepper and pour/spread onto a small greased tray and allow to cool. Remember the tray needs to give you good thick pieces so a medium roasting tray should do it.

Make your tomato sauce by sweating onion and garlic, adding red wine and tomatoes and simmering, stirring occasionally to cook out for an hour.

Slice your vegetables into large thick slices. Par boil your pumpkin for three to five minutes and chop mushrooms into half. Heat your char-grill and toss vegetables in a bowl with a healthy twist of sat and pepper and a splash of olive oil before skidding into the pan.

When done place on a tray and allow to cool. Now, slice your polenta into 6 squares, suitable for stacking the vegetables on and char-grill carefully. To be honest, I couldn’t be bothered.

Grate your mozzarella, puree your sauce and grease some baking trays and space out the 6 polenta slices. He trick to get this stack to stay stacked is basic culinary welding. You start with a smear of sauce, a sprinkle of cheese, then build up with largest vegetables at the bottom and between each layer go sauce and cheese. This means two things: your sauce and cheese melt and hold vegetables in place and secondly you get nice yumminess between layers of vegetables.

You can build them prior to dinner and keep in fridge. Just pre-heat oven to 170c and cook them for 15 minutes.

Serve with sauce around base, not too much and a drizzle of olive, sprinkle of chopped basil and a spoon of ricotta.