Zucchini oven dish

What do you get when you drown your zucchini in tomatoes and cheese? Well this is what you get!

I've been wanting to make a vegetarian lasagne kind of dish for a while now. Pasta-less aswell. And with wanting to make, I mostly mean wanting to eat. The problem is, when I finally suggested it to my boyfriend this week, he did not approve. It's because the dish I had in mind used eggplant and he does not like eggplant. Says it tastes like shoes.

However, I knew this, so I had prepared for the situation, suggesting I'd replace the eggplant with zucchini. He still wasn't happy about a lasagne without the pasta and meat. Why not just make a lasagne that's like lasagne? So after I told him we'd not call it lasagne and after me whining a little while longer, he basically told me "Do whatever you want". Yes, I could make my dish!

I loosely followed this Dutch recipe and with loosely, I mean I switched a few ingredients, used more cheese (it's not my fault the package carried more than the recipe called for!) and I adjusted oven temperature and time. I feel I can safely say I made this my own dish.

When it came out of the oven, it looked just like I had imagined it would. Just like the food I had been craving for weeks. Even better: It tasted great too! Even my boyfriend reluctantly admitted he kind of liked it and today, while taking about the dish, he told me it tasted amazing. I'd say that's a success, wouldn't you?

By the way, this dish is totally vegetarian! Not vegan though, there's lots of cheese.

Anyway, enough talking, onto the recipe!

Ingredients

2 Zucchinis
500g Tomatoes
150g Tomato puree
3 Garlic cloves (because we love our garlic)
250g Mozzarella
100g Grated cheese (or cheat, and use 200g, like I did)
2 Tbsp basil
Salt

Directions

Wash the zucchinis and cut them in long, thin slices. Lay them out on a plate and sprinkle with some salt. Let this sit while you do the next steps.
Wash the tomatoes and cut them up into smaller parts.
Cut the garlic cloves into small pieces, or use a garlic press.
Pre-heat the oven to 200C.
Heat up some oil in a wok pan and fry the garlic for a short while.
Add the tomatoes and heat them up for a couple of minutes.
Add the tomato puree and heat up for another few minutes.
Turn off the fire and mix the basil into the tomato mixture.
cut the mozzarella into thin slices.
Use a paper towel to dry the moisture off the zucchini slices, left there by the salt.
Oil up an oven dish (or use butter) and layer your dish like so:
Start with a layer of tomatoes;
Add a layer of zucchini slices;
Add a layer of cheese (mozzarella and grated);
Start again with tomatoes;
End your layers with cheese.
Put your dish in the oven for 25 minutes.
Done!

Enjoy!

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