Courgette gratin recipe

I am sure that by now if you are growing courgettes, you have a lot of them! Finding different ways to use them up can be challenging but with a bit of imagination its amazing what we can come up with. We created this courgette gratin recipe and highly recommend you try it too.

I was on call this weekend and barely saw home. My wife wanting to make sure I was eating something healthy and use up some of our courgette mountain discovered this courgette gratin recipe and cooked it up for tea one evening.

Now she did add an aubergine to add some interest which worked rather well. The hardest part about the recipe was the salting of the vegetables which she started in the morning so that all the water was removed come cooking time.

Courgette gratin recipe

Many of the ingredients came from our back garden and what didnt was pretty much store cupboard essentials

• 2 medium courgettes (from our garden)
• 1 Aubergine (from our garden)
• Salt flakes
• 1tbsp olive oil
• 400g tomatoes (from our garden)
• 1 garlic clove (from the allotment)
• Handful of basil (from our garden)
• 50g polenta flour
• 50g plain flour
• 1 large egg (from our garden)
• 1 ball of mozzarella
• 10g cheddar cheese grated (paramasan would be better)
• 50g bread crumbs (we save stale bread to make breadcrumbs)

To make

1. Slice the courgette and aubergine lengthways. place on a large plate in a single layer and sprinkle over a pinch of salt flakes. Leave for at least 4 hours for the water to come out the vegetables. Pour away the water from the plate and dab the vegetables with paper towel to dry.
2. Heat the oil in a frying pan, chop the tomatoes and garlic and add to the pan. Cook over a gentle heat for 5 to 10 minutes or until the sauce is thick. Tear in the basil leaves to add some extra flavour.
3. Heat the oven to gas mark 6, 200c or 180c for fan assisted ovens. In a bowl mix the 2 flours together. In another bowl beat the egg. Now take the courgette and aubergine slices and dip into the egg then into the flour then place the courgette into a cooking dish in a single layer.
4. slice the mozzarella and place half of the slices over the courgette and aubergines. Spoon over half of the tomato sauce.
5. Add a second layer of the courgette aubergine mix, followed by the mozzarella and tomato sauce.
6. Mix the breadcrumbs and cheddar cheese together and scatter over the top. Drizzle some olive oil over the top.
7. Place in the oven for 45 minutes or until golden brown then serve.

Verdict

We served this with some salad leaves as we felt that this was a meal in itself. This courgette gratin was a meal on its own. We found that this fed us both in 1 sitting with enough leftover for a second sitting. The leftovers are now in our freezer ready for another day.

We both really enjoyed this meal and its one we will certainly be cooking again.

In terms of how much the ingredients cost (we are of course trying to beat the cost of living crisis) I worked out all the ingredients we didn't grow ourselves cost us 92p. Which I don't think is bad value. I have added a breakdown of how much the ingredients cost below

• salt flakes 2p
• olive oil 9p
• Polenta flour 16p
• plain flour 9p
• Mozzarella 49p
• Cheddar 7p

What do you think of this recipe and will you give it a go? let me know in the comments below.