Brielle's Avalon

I saw something like this in a cookbook decades ago and made it a couple times. I decided to try making it today with what I pulled out of my garden.

Grated Potatoes for the crust

1 Lemon to prevent discolouring

Onion, chopped

1 egg

Grate the potatoes. Squeeze a lemon over them to keep them from discolouring. If you don’t have enough, use a carrot, turnip, beet or whatever other root vegetable you have handy to fill it out. Toss in part of a chopped onion, too.

Mix up your grated crust stuff with the chopped onion and a whisked egg as a binder.

Press into a greased pie tin or casserole. Bake until dry-ish, about 1/2 an hour or so, at 350 degrees. While that’s baking chop up the rest of the filling stuff.

Chop more onion

1 Zucchini, halved and sliced

Cauliflower

Cooked Bacon, chopped, optional

Cheese

Chop more onion, halve and slice a zucchini and separate a cauliflower into sections and slice them.

When the crust is out of the oven, put a layer of grated cheese in the bottom.

Arrange a layer of cauliflower on the cheese.

Add a bit more cheese if you like and arrange zucchini on top.

More cheese, if you like, and a layer of onions

Put a layer of chopped Bacon over that. This is, of course, optional.

In a bowl (probably the one you’ve already been using), put seasonings. Thyme, pepper, basil, garlic, celery seed…whatever strikes your fancy.

Add 2 or 3 eggs and some milk and whisk.

If you like, sprinkle more cheese on top before poring egg, seasoning and milk mixture over it all. If the milk/egg mixture doesn’t go quite far enough mix up another egg and some milk to our over and finish it off.

Bake for about half an hour until the egg mixture sets.

Serve as a main course or side dish. Biscuits or freshly baked bread go well with it, as does as a nice glass of wine. A green salad wouldn’t go amiss, either. If you’re a devout carnivore, go ahead and have a steak, chop or some meatloaf as well.