Chef and cookbook author Susie Middleton made her first tian in culinary school. The gratin has since become one of her signature dishes.

Before I go on, I should give a little background you may or may not know. Tian has two meanings. There’s the gratin itself. And then there’s the earthenware dish from France’s Provence region that you use to bake a gratin.

Middleton’s gratin features vegetables currently very much in season: zucchini, ripe tomatoes, and onions.

She adds a special twist. The zucchini are first marinated in a mixture of orange juice, balsamic vinegar, extra virgin olive oil, and freshly chopped mint.

“These flavors give this gratin a nice, bright flavor,” she writes in her excellent cookbook, Fast, Fresh & Green (Chronicle Books, 2010), where this recipe appears.

Her other secret: “I cook the gratin for a long time—long enough for the juices from the vegetables to greatly reduce and caramelize,” she says. “With those reduced tomato juices mingling with the sweet browned onions, the flavor is just intense.”

How much is a long time in the oven? “An hour or so in most cases,” says Middleton. She cautions against undercooking the gratin, “as even some experienced cooks do.”

For the tian, sautéed onions are arranged on the bottom of a gratin dish. Overlapping rows of sliced zucchini and tomatoes are placed on top. Freshly grated Parmesan cheese is sprinkled over the zucchini. The gratin gets a Parmesan and bread crumb topping along with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil before it goes in the oven.

“Some of my friends who tested this recipe told me they were happy to eat this as a main dish with a salad and some bread,” says Middleton. “I’m with them, but I often double this and serve it when we’re cooking lots of skirt steaks to feed my husband’s Argentine relatives, who never arrive in small numbers.”

Bon appétit,

Claude S. Weiller
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
California Olive Ranch

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.