zucchini au gratin

Zucchini au Gratin

For this meal I've adapted my other gratin potatoes for a lovely green and yellow zucchini/squash dish.  I made it for our pre-thanks meal, and then recreated it a week later when I knew that I'd be able to eat more of it myself.  I'd recommend it whenever you accidentally buy too many zucchini.  (Corgettes-lovers meet zucchini, same difference .... are we all on the same page now?)

ingredients

• 2 zucchini
• 1 summer squash
  
• 1 cup of milk
• 2 tablespoons of butter
• rosemary
• 3 cloves of garlic
• a saffron-esque orange seasoning to taste
• some sharp cheddar cheese
• 1 tomato
• a bit of parmesan cheese
  

So slice the squashes up.  I like the slicer on my cheese grater, but be prepared to guard your knuckles.  I layed the zucchini and summer squash.  To be honest, the second time I made it (like the photo above) I only used one zucchini instead of both, but it was a bad choice because the zucchini shrink a bit as they cook, so the second time around it was a bit less substantial. ....so use both and press them into the casserole dish if you have to.  In the middle of the layers I put in some of the garlic.

When I was done, I mixed up the rest of the garlic with the milk, seasoning and salt/pepper like so:

The seasoning there really is the secret ingredient ... its just that much more satisfying with that yummy orange colour.  Saffron for cheapskates, yo.  Anyway, pour that onto the sliced squash.  It'll all bubble up and be yummy, so don't stress about covering everything perfectly.  Then you want to put the cheese onto the top.  (For the pre-thanks version, I sliced a vine tomato into six slices to garnish and put a good amount of parmesan cheese on top of each slice.)

This is the key bit:  Cover with aluminum foil.  Put in oven at 425 degrees fahrenheit for 20 mins.  Use your timers folks ... when the 20 mins is done, remove the foil.  20 more minutes.  Then cut up the butter and put on the top.  20 more minutes and you're done.