Workin' on My Tian

My obsession with local, seasonal produce and my discovery of the kitchen mandoline collided when I made a vegetable tian the other morning. According to the Boston Globe, a tian is a mixture of vegetables, all very thinly sliced, tucked into tight overlapping concentric circles in a shallow dish and baked together. That's exactly what I did.

Using the mandoline made for a speedy cutting job, but layering the veggies was a bit time consuming. (This leads me to think that one could make a 'Lazy Man's Tian' where everything is sort of tossed in together.) Maybe I need to take less of a design approach to my tians?


As you can see, it just looks like a blob anyway after it's cut, so I'm all for the Lazy Man method!


This dish was good when it came out of the oven...but it was spectacular the following day for lunch.

ADDENDUM:
I couldn't pass up the opportunity to make an entire dish from the current veggies at the farmer's market, so I made another tian. Let's call it Busy Man's Tian — especially appropriate because I was cooking/prepping three other things at the same time. This time I just mixed everything together in the same bowl and plopped it into the pie dish. The verdict will have to be delivered by those who ate it — feel free to leave a comment, mom!