Italian Casserole
Absolutely delicious! I tossed this together on a creative whim as a take-to-school lunch for my companion, who is a middle school music teacher. I included a bag of celery sticks in case he felt like eating it as a dip.
1 clove garlic
1 red bell pepper, chopped coarsely
1 cup olives,
pitted
3 tablespoon capers, soaked 10 min, rinsed
1 cup sundried tomatoes, soaked 30 min
2 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoon dried
oregano
3 tablespoon dried basil--but if you can get fresh, use fresh!
1 cup pine nuts
6 cherry tomatoes (garnish), cut into slivers
1 sprinkle sea
salt
1 large sweet potato/yam, chopped coarsely
1 another large yam (optional--for dipping chips), cut into thin rounds
1. Set sundried tomatoes and capers to soak.
2. Pit olives: cut them in half, then take out the pit.(Pits are good to suck on while
working…))
3. In a food processor, chop the pine nuts into a coarse flour-like consistency. Set aside in small bowl.
4. Rinse, scrub and coarsely chop 1 yam to put into processor. In this order, process in the other ingredients, tasting regularly to fine tune the recipe to your
own taste: garlic, red bell pepper, basil (if fresh), olives, capers, olive oil, oregano, basil (if dried), sundried tomatoes. Adjust to taste. If you want more salty, add more capers.
5. Presentation: Spoon into a bowl or onto a plate so it looks nice, and top with an even layer of the pine-nut flour prepared in step
1.
6. Slice the cherry tomatoes into coin-like shapes and arrange them on top and around the yam-mixture. Drizzle a little extra olive oil just over the tomatoes, and sprinkle the tiniest amount of sea-salt over them as well.
7. Garnish with fresh basil, parsely, arugula or
whatever green you can find.
Dip: If you would prefer to eat it as a dip, try it with sweet-potato chips (a raw sweet potato cut into chip-like rounds) or celery sticks.
PS. I’m sorry I didn’t get a picture of this one. It was beautiful. And don’t we all know from experience that food tastes better when it looks good!
