How to make a French Tian
Gratin is an oven baked dish. It is quite popular in France, especially in my home region in the South East.
Tian is a typical dish in the South of France. It is also
oven baked and get together the typical vegetables form this sunny region.
With so much
good vegetables the cuisine from this part of France, is based on vegetables
and spices like thyme and oregano.
My uncle
lives in a beautiful village hanged in the mountains surrounded by oaks, pines,
and cicadas in the Provence. I spent all my summers there when I was a child with my cousins.
This is a very nice and precious remembering for me. All the flavors of the
lavender, the pines, the apricots and peaches are still vivid in my mind. Nowadays you cannot find anymore these voluptuous tasty fruits,…
Do you know
what the flavor of a tomato is? What is its real taste?
When you get
it directly from the plant, it’s warm because of the sun; it has this marvelous shiny red. You bite it and the juice just splashed into your mouth,
the slightly warm juice just spread the flavor in your palate and nose. At that time, it was a innocent and furtive
gesture. Today, I remember it as a treasure! The amazing and tasty vegetables from the sunny side of France can give you very tasty dishes as the tian!
Each family has its own recipe. Let me share with you my
family recipe!
Ingredients
for 4/6 persons:
-
3 ripe tomatoes (choose plum tomato breed, they are
usually more flavorful)
-
1 middle size eggplant/aubergine
-
1 Zucchinis/courgette
-
1 Onions
-
1 Garlic clove
-
2 Bell peppers (red or green as we prefer, the red one
is sweeter and the green is a little bit more bitter)
-
Thyme and oregano
-
Salt, pepper and
3 tbs. of olive oil
Turn on the
oven to 180ºC.
1. We will
first prepare the zucchinis; wash them and slice them in 1 cm thick.
Do the same
with the onions, tomatoes and eggplants. For the bell peppers, be careful to
take off the stem and then, to also take out the white stripes inside as well
as the seeds. Then, slice it the same way of the other vegetables.
2. In a 40
cm long baking pan, crush the garlic clove and spread it well all over the
inside sides.
3. Go
alternating rows of zucchinis, tomatoes, eggplants, onions, again and again
till finishing the vegetables and fill up the pan.
4. Then
spread olive oil, salt and pepper as well as thyme and put it in the oven at
180ºC for 40 min.
It’s a
healthy and easy dish to go with roast meat, lamb shops or chicken. Do not
hesitate to change the vegetables!
This is also
a very easy dish to prepare and it always looks amazing! I find it a perfect
basic recipe to learn and experiment before to let you create your own recipes!
Do you want to discover other French regional tians and some of my own creation from my travels around the world?
I will release a handy ebook about tian at the end of the month! You can already reserve it here and get it for FREE!
A ppetit Voyage is your globe-trotting connoisseur: helping you change your mind about food, wines and cooking!
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