Full of Flavours

We love vegetables and therefore we often cook vegetarian dishes. We don’t eat vegetarian every day, however we do most of the time. The dish we are making today is easy to digest and packed “Full of Flavours”.
We calculated that making this dish has cost us approximately 2,50 euros. It’s good to mention that we live in the Netherlands and our groceries came from the Lidl, we calculated only what we used for this dish since we will use what is left in other dishes. In the next section we will share the recipe for vegan melanzane zucchini spaghetti.

⏲ 20-30 minutes
🍽 3-4 portions

Ingredients
– 1 eggplant
– 2 zucchini’s
– 1 carrot
– 1/2 leek (the white part)
– 1 white onion
– 1 red onion
– 2 single cloves garlic *
– olive oil
– 70 grams tomato puree
– 2 level teaspoons paprika powder
– 3 level teaspoons parsley
– 3 level teaspoons oregano
– half a teaspoon of ground black pepper
– 1 vegetable stock cube

How to make it?
First cut all the vegetables into pieces, the leek and red onion should be cut into slices and kept separate from the other vegetables.

Add some olive oil to a hot baking pan and add the garlic, white onion, carrot and the eggplant. Bake these until done, this should take about 10 to 15 minutes. While this is baking you can add the herbs and spices. Meanwhile you can set a separate cooking pan on the stove with some water and salt, in which you can later cook the zucchini spaghetti.
Get the baking pan off the stove and put the mix in either a different pan or a bowl that doesn’t have a baking layer so you don’t damage it. Then mix the vegetables with a hand blender until you get a near smooth mixture.

Bake the red onion and leek in a baking pan until they turn brown (use high fire). Cut the zucchini into long (spaghetti like) slices. See the picture for the technique of how to cut it like spaghetti. You can also use a mandolin if you think this is to much work. When the water in the cooking pan is cooking you can add the zucchini slices. Depending on varying size they may only need to cook for 1 to 3 minutes until they’re a “al dente”. If you notice that some slices are thicker than others, add the thickest ones first and the thinnest slices after about a minute has past. Drain the zucchini and put it back in the cooking pan, then add a little bit of olive oil and give it a little swirl.

Now you can serve your dish, add some salt and pepper according to your own taste and enjoy your vegan melanzane zucchini spaghetti!

* We used the single clove garlic or solo garlic because of it’s nice edge where garlic meets shallot. If you don’t want the taste of garlic to be as present you could use 1 or even half a solo garlic clove.