Guest Post: Chèvre Niçois Verrine with Crumble Topping

Today I am very happy to turn over the LC floor to fellow Floridian Barbara from Moveable Feasts . If you are not familiar with Barbara's wonderful blog please check it out. It is packed with great food, writing, and amazing photography. Everything we love about good blogs.



Enjoy...



Amazingly talented blogger friend (and fellow Floridian) Lazaro from Lazaro Cooks! has been kind enough to ask me to do a guest blog.  Lazaro's posts always make me smile and my tummy growls when I see his photos. So I am truly honored. Never having done a guest post before, but knowing Lazaro loves recipes with fresh veggies and sustainable products, I decided to make a verrine with some marvelous flavors.  It comes from one of my favorite books, Verrines, by José Maréchal. It's in French and my darling French-speaking daughter helped me with the translation. I hope you enjoy the recipe!



Chèvre Niçois Verrine with Crumble Topping





Ingredients:

1 large eggplant

2 zucchini

1 red pepper

3 tomatoes

1 onion

2 large garlic cloves

1 stem fresh thyme and 1 of fresh rosemary

1 cup olive oil

120 grams goat cheese, room temperature

1/3 cup cream

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 good pinches of salt

2 pinches pepper



For the crumble topping:

200 g. flour (7/8 cup)

100 g. butter (a little less than 1/2 cup), room temperature

2 pinches salt

1 egg yolk



Method:

Prepare the crumble topping. With your fingertips, mix the softened butter, flour, egg yolk and salt. Using a fork, crumble up the dough and chill 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, finely dice the eggplant, zucchini and peppers. Heat a little olive oil in a pan. Sauté each vegetable separately, then drain in a colander. In the same pan, sauté onion over low heat and add the chopped garlic, thyme branch, and rosemary branch. Peel (by dipping into boiling water for a minute) and seed the tomatoes; cut into small cubes. Return the drained vegetables in the pan, add the tomatoes, season and cook for 1 to 2 minutes over low heat. Set aside to cool.



Preheat the oven to 375 ° F. Mix the goat cheese and cream  with a wooden spatula until smooth. Stir in olive oil, salt and pepper. Set aside.



Spread the refrigerated crumbs of dough on a baking sheet or pie dish and bake in  the oven, stirring once in a while until golden brown. Set aside to cool.



To assemble the verrines, remove the thyme and rosemary branches and put the eggplant mixture at the bottom of the glasses, then creamed goat cheese ( I used a pastry bag) and finally add the crumble.

This recipe makes 4-6 verrines, depending on glass size.



For more please check out Moveable Feasts.