Ahoy there! Like most people who started a blog a while ago, I’m not as consistent with it as I used to be, but I’ll always come back at some point (usually when work is slow and/or we have a holiday weekend coming up…).
Today’s entry is a good one for all you vegetable gardeners out there–13-3: Vegetable Deep Dish Pie. I was growing zucchini and tomatoes last year (that’s when I actually cooked this), so this one was perfect to use some of those up.
Of course, if you’ve got something else in the ground this year (I’ve got a different type of tomato and some assorted pepper plants this time around), you can vary this to accommodate whatever you’ve got or whatever you like. There’s always farmers’ markets as well!
Cheesy veggie pie, not much more to it than that. Here’s another TIP for you: use a frozen pie crust if you don’t want to make your own.
Ingredients. You can see I used a frozen pie crust, mostly because it was taking up room in my freezer. Tomatoes and zucchini I grew myself, but the leeks came from the grocery store. We’ll see if the custard holds together using oat milk instead of real milk.
Slicing the leeks. My zucchini were a bit…oddly shaped this year. Tomatoes are San Marzanos, which are more used for sauce than for this type of recipe. However, I didn’t really get enough tomatoes for sauce last year (I planted too late), so they got used wherever they could be.
Once you slice them up, it’s harder to tell how strange they looked initially.
Sautéing the leeks.
Not sure if I showed it yet in any of the other recipes, but I finally got a new stove last summer. This one has convection and air-fry built in, which is an upgrade for me after years of using crappy stoves in all of my apartments. I had always planned on getting a gas stove to replace my old stove (since that’s what fancy people who like to cook tend to do), but reading more about ventilation and other issues led me to go electric again (I have an old house with poor ventilation and am not looking to replace my pots and pans, which is sometimes required if you go with induction).
I believe it’s a poor cook who blames their tools–I can cook just as well on a hot plate if I have to, so in my opinion, you go with whatever works for your situation.
Slicing my tomatoes with an off-set bread knife, because why not? I mostly used it for the serrated edge.
Time to start layering veggies.
Very bright and summery.
After topping with the “custard”, which really seems more like quiche filling than anything. I mean, isn’t this essentially just a veggie quiche?
After baking. Looks cheesy–how did the inside turn out?
Held together okay, but it got a little waterier than I would have liked. Probably because of the oat milk.
Final plate, so you can see a full slice. It’s very vegetable-y, which I suppose works as part of the Vegetarian category. Something nice and light for summer. I thought it was a bit under-seasoned (as a lot of Simply Delicious recipes are), but that can be fixed. I think it would be good with some different veggies, like broccoli or mushrooms.
Grade: B+
