Yeah I know – a contradiction, but the life of a small business man is busy however I do like to eat well. Because a lot of my work is at home I like recipes which use oven and can tick away in the background whilst I’m working on other things. We’re lucky too to have some beautiful quality ingredients in the food – our Italian supplier Seggiano is all about produce made with quality ingredients where the flavour of those ingredients becomes the centrepiece. They’ve already put so much love into every jar that you can skimp a little on the effort yourself and still produce a supper which tastes of care and attention.

For our staff training evening we did a really simple Aubergine Parmigiana using 3 aubergines 3 jars of Seggiano Black olive sauce, 1 oven dish and a quick béchamel to top it off (and keep it vegan) but some buffalo mozzarella and a grating of parmesan would work easily as well. It takes a while in the oven but very little time in the preparation.

Cheats Aubergine Parmigiana Recipe

Ingredients

Method

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Slice the aubergines length-ways into half centimetre thick slices. Brush them with olive oil then sprinkle with thyme leaves (optional) and sea salt. Place in an oven dish and put them in the oven for 30-40 minutes turning a couple of times until soft.

Remove from the oven and tip in the jars of sauce and mix – you could take the time to layer it all up carefully if you wanted but this is a quick and easy recipe so we didn’t.

Top with béchamel sauce or slices of mozzarella and grated parmesan. Return to the oven for a further 30 minutes. Serve with bread and salad.

Béchamel Sauce

A basic sauce is 50g butter (or suitable plant butter), 50g flour and 500ml of milk (or suitable plant milk). Heat the butter in a pan until melted, stir in the flour then slowly stir in the milk whisking as you go so the milk combines and thickens slowly producing a smooth salt. Season. To make it a little more “cheesy” I add a tablespoon of yeast flakes and a teaspoon of Dijon mustard.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *