Ingredients
Directions
Wash all vegetables. Light up charcoal grill/bbq. Meanwhile, clean, slice, and season eggplant and zucchini with olive oil and salt. Use your fave spice rub if desired or pesto. Wash and trim fennel, remove outer shell if necessary and slice. Give a quick wash to the mushrooms, trim off bottoms, chop and make a duxelles using a food processor. First, roast bell peppers and begin cooking the bouquet in foil. Seal roasted peppers in a freezer bag to sweat for 15 min; peel and seed. Roast tomatoes and peel; set aside. Grill eggplant and zucchini; set aside. In a hot frying pan. sauté mushroom duxelles with a drizzle of olive oil for about 5 min; transfer to a bowl and set aside. In the same frying pan, sauté fennel for 5 min, season with salt and pepper, deglaze with stock or wine – cover and let cook for about 20 min to soften; set aside. Heat up a large pot, drizzle some olive oil and salt – Wilt spinach stirring swiftly for about 4 min; drain and wrap up in paper towels, and press down to extract as much moisture as possible. Skin and seed all bell peppers and season with salt and pepper.
Wrap all ingredients in heavy duty foil and place on grill – flip and rotate every so often. Let mixture to confit for about 45 min. Cool, unwrap and squeeze out flesh from garlic, onion, and shallots – chop. Discard thyme and bay leaf.
Chop roasted tomatoes. In a large and hot frying pan, throw in the garlic-onion mixture; add more olive oil if necessary. Add tomatoes, sugar and fennel and the canned crushed tomatoes. Cook for 20 min and break down mixture in a food processor in 2 batches adding fresh basil leaves as it goes. Return mixture to the stove and cook on low for an additional 45 min to an hour to thicken. Readjust seasoning with salt and pepper if needed. Let cool on pan and chill.
Place a 8/9-inch 21/23 cm diameter cake ring lined with a plastic cake strip or parchment onto a large plate. Start with a layer of eggplant followed by mushroom duxelles (use half). Add summer squash, red bell peppers, spinach, yellow bell peppers, mushroom duxelles, zucchini and poblano (pasilla chili). Top with plastic wrap and a flat dish that is slightly smaller than the cake ring diameter. Add some weight on top. Surround the base of the cake ring with paper towels and chill overnight; this will compress the veggies releasing remaining moisture. Remove weight, and top with the tomato marmalade. Serve warm or cool. Bon appétit!