When dinner comes around, I find I'm in one of two camps: super prepared and ready to make something awesome or kind of a "steam some veggies to go with whatever we are eating" type of person. When I'm prepared, this side dish of mediterranean veggie bake is my kids favourite way to eat veggies.
Why bother with a veggie bake?
Mixing veggies with flavours like bacon and pureed tomato helps kids with the flavours of different veggies like eggplant. The crunchy topping of cheese and breadcrumbs makes it literally irresistible.
How long will it take?
This is completely doable on a weeknight, with about 10 active minutes, then your oven doing the hard work for you for 25 minutes to create the delicious crust and cooking everything together.
Watch the video to see how easy it is to pull this together! You can even get the kids chopping up the veggies, putting on the cheese etc. Plus as a bonus, you can prep this up to the baking point, then refrigerate your mediterranean veggie bake until dinner time and then bake it.
But is it really kid friendly?
I was totally surprised the first time I made this that Master 7 loved it. And I've made it time and time again since. Eggplant isn't a favourite here, but mixed with the other veggies, it gets eaten!
You can vary the veggies depending on what is in your fridge- I've used baby spinach, other colours of capsicum, red onion instead of brown, switched out the bacon for ham- really the possibilities are endless!
What can I serve mediterranean veggie bake with?
It's delicious with things like schnitzels or crumbed chicken, lamb cutlets, salmon skewers, you name it! We tend to eat this bake with just about anything. It's also perfect for taking to a bbq etc as it just goes in the oven when you get there.
Mediterranean veggie bake
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 onion diced
- 2 rashers of bacon diced
- 400 ml tomato puree
- ½ red capsicum
- 4-6 leaves basil torn
- 1 zucchini diced
- 1 eggplant diced
- 1 cup grated cheese
- ½ cup dried breadcrumbs
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 180 degrees celsius.
- Add the olive oil to a medium pan over medium heat.
- Add the bacon and onion, coat in the olive oil and cook until the onion is soft and the bacon starts to colour.
- Add in the tomato puree, capsicum and basil.
- add the zucchini and eggplant and stir everything to coat.
- Pour into a baking dish.
- Cover with cheese and bread rumbs.
- cook at 180 degrees celsius for 25 minutes, until golden and bubbling.
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