This week is spring break and I just decided to come home and spend time with my family (slash hang out with my recently acquired FUTURE HUSBAND but shhhh he doesn't know yet). Everyone (my mom) in Charlotte, however, either has a job (my mom)(and MY FUTURE HUSBAND), a boyfriend (my mom), or goes to bed really early (my mom. and my grandmother), so I found myself coming home from my favorite cafe at around 9:30 feeling terribly bored and lonely. I really like having the house to myself, obvi, but last night my brain was just not having it, so I detoured to the grocery store to get some ingredients for my typical lonely girl fix: the casserole. I know, casseroles are for second-time bachelors, post-ICU patients, and the women of the fifties, but what do they all have in common? These people are the pitied, and by golly if I wasn't throwing a little pity party myself. So, casserole it was. I rallied up the fixins and I was outta there. My oven was preheated in no time, and I was soon-to-be lonely no more.
Ingredients:
Assorted veggies. I bought one bag of assorted baby carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower and one bag of Brussels sprouts. It totaled 3-4 cups.
1 yellow onion
3 cloves of garlic
1/2 to 1 cup sun dried tomatoes, depending on how much you like them and how many you can get your hands on. I like the dry ones that come in a bag, not the ones stored in oil.
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
Olive oil, Lawry's seasoning salt, cayenne pepper, chili flakes, and freshly ground pepper
Preheat the oven to 375. Slice your veggies so they all have a flat side. I'll cut my cauliflower and broccoli into thirds and my carrots and Brussels sprouts in halves. Toss them in enough olive oil so they are thinly but evenly coated, add some of your spices to taste, and pop em in the oven on a cookie sheet. Stir occasionally.
While those are sizzlin, heat up a pan on medium with some olive oil and chop up your onion and garlic. Put the onion and garlic in the hot pan with about a teaspoon of Lawry's and any other spices you'd like. You really just want the garlic to be cooked; you're not trying to caramelize the onions. Remove from heat.
Take out your veggies when the edges are brown or even slightly (ever so slightly) blackened.
On the cookie sheet, mix in your onion concoction and your tomatoes. Let the mixture cool just to the point that you can touch the food without having to throw it down screaming. Mix in about 2/3 of your cheese. That's 1/3 a cup I think. Pour it all into a casserole dish and top with the rest of your cheese and a drizzle of olive oil. Using your finger, push any protruding sun dried tomatoes to just below the surface of the cheese. Sun dried tomatoes tend to burn in the direct exposure to the heat.
Everything is cooked, so baking is only a matter of the cheese melting and the top crisping. Just check on it and take it out when it looks good, kinda like my picture below! (Though this is actually of the next day, heated up in a smaller dish.)
Casseroles are your friend; pitied you are not!
Until your time again finds mine,
Julia
