French Vegetables, Kind Of...

Tonight I cheated and picked up a lemon garlic rotisserie chicken at Wegmans. But, not wanting to go completely pre-prepared, I made the vegetable sides... we hadCaramelized Shallots, a Vegetable Tian, Parmesan couscous and a loaf of pepperidge farm artisan bread. The Husband not only actually put butter on the hot loaf of bread but he also suggested that the vegetables be put on the rotating menu. The Tian was very easy (though it does take about 40 minutes to roast in the oven)... I stuck with Ina's recipe for the most part (adjusting the ingredient amounts as I was making it just for 2 instead of 4 to 6) and changing up the potatoes and tomatoes due to a small vegetable emergency. For some reason the tomatoes I bought earlier in the week decided to become some sort of science experiment along with two of the three white potatoes. Luckily I had a reserve of alternate tomatoes and potatoes so I ended up using one yukon gold potato, two small red potatoes and one white potato and instead of two regular tomatoes I sliced up a bunch of grape tomatoes and tossed them on top of the layered potatoes and zucchini (my zucchini, unlike the potatoes and tomatoes were unscathed)... Overall I liked the Yukon Gold potato slices the best, because after all Yukon Gold potatoes seem to be the equivalent of potato crack. The vegetable slices were placed on top of a layer of sauteed onions and then roasted in the oven for about 40 minutes or so.

For the caramelized shallots I wasn't able to keep them together as Ina's recipe suggests since I managed to obtain the world's largest shallots. Instead of a bunch of small shallots making up my pound I had about 4 giant ones. So, I cut them into quarters, sauteed them in butter with a bit of sugar and red wine vinegar and then I placed them in a baking dish. Once in the baking dish I added a bit of cream and put some bread crumbs on top and added them to the oven with the Tian. Very, very tasty. Topped off with a bit of couscous (what is possibly the easiest starch in the world to prepare) and accompanied by the rotisserie chicken, all was right with dinner.