Meatloaf Romesco with Vegetable Tian is a stunning, flavorful dish you’ll want to make again and again. It’s the perfect fusion of Spanish, French and German/American cuisine all together in one pan! You start with a layer of sauteed onion and garlic, topped with a ring of thin-sliced vegetables in a pretty alternating pattern. A big mound of meatloaf goes in the center, doused with Spanish Romesco sauce. You bake it all together with a generous sprinkling of cheese over the veggies. And voila! A complete meal in a pan that nourishes your body, delights the senses and fills you with a grand sense of comfort and accomplishment.
A Fusion of Cuisines
The Spanish influence here stems from the lively Romesco sauce: a roasted garlic, tomato and roasted pepper based sauce thickened with almonds and breadcrumbs.
From France comes the tian: a beautiful layered vegetable dish with fresh herbs and cheese. Tians typically feature zucchini, eggplant, tomato and potato.
And the meatloaf? While there are variations on meatloaf worldwide, we’ll count it as German/American, since German immigrants to the US were the ones who invented “scrapple”, the beginnings of the dish we now call meatloaf.
The Perfect Make Ahead Dish for Company
If you’re looking for a marvelous make-ahead dish to serve to company, this is it. While you might think this dish looks complicated and fancy, it’s not difficult to put together. Then you sit back and relax while it bakes. With all the cooking work completed and just the baking portion left, you can sit back and actually ENJOY chatting with your visitors. While the scents of all the lovely flavors fill your home and tempt your tastebuds.
Inspiration for this dish
I made this dish on a whim last Sunday because I had a tiny eggplant and a beautiful ripe tomato I’d picked from my garden that needed using and one zucchini left. I’ve been wanting to make tian forever and a day, it seems, and that day I just felt driven to finally DO it. But I also wanted meat. I had no idea how, but I just started. Once I saw this lovely ring of veggies, the answer came to me. A mound of meatloaf right there in the middle! Yes. How obvious, once you see it before you.
I wasn’t sure at all how it would turn out. So I just sort of made it up as I went along. I happened to have some of my beloved Romesco sauce left after canning a batch of it, so of course I wanted to use Romesco for the meatloaf topping.
Finally my creation was done and I pulled it out of the oven. It smelled SO good. I couldn’t wait to slice into it. One bite and I felt like celebrating. Richly rewarded with delicious results, I was wishing I’d invited some friends over for dinner!
I did the next best thing. I called my parents to tell them about my cooking experiment. They had never heard of a tian, so I had to explain it to them. And then tell them about the meatloaf and the Spanish sauce on top. “Oh”, said my dad, “so you made a hot dish.”
It was far from a “hot dish” in my mind, but I suppose that’s exactly what midwestern Americans (aside from myself) would call it. And exactly why they’d love it. It’s meat and potatoes re-invented, with a few veggies snuck in. Comfort food at it’s best.
Meatloaf Romesco with Vegetable Tian
- Prep Time: 30 min
- Cook Time: 1 hour
- Total Time: 1 hour 30 min
- Yield: 4 – 6 servings 1x
- Category: Dinner
- Method: Baked
- Cuisine: Mixed
Ingredients
For the vegetable tian:
- 2 – 4 Tablespoons olive oil, divided
- 1 medium onion, peeled & chopped
- 6 – 8 cloves garlic, peeled & chopped fine
- 1 large tomato or 2 smaller tomatoes
- 1 small zucchini, thinly sliced
- 1 small eggplant, thinly sliced
- 1 small potato, thinly sliced
- 1 Tablespoon chopped fresh herbs
- 2 – 4 oz. shredded Parmesan or Italian blend of cheeses
For the meatloaf:
- 1 lb. ground meat of choice (venison, beef, chicken, turkey – I used venison)
- 1 1/2 teaspoons Trader Joe’s 21 Seasoning Salute (or your favorite no-salt seasoning)
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 egg
- 1/3 cup whole wheat breadcrumbs
- 2 Tablespoons good mustard
- 2 Tablespoons chopped pickles
- 2/3 cup finely chopped veggies (leftover from above), sauteed in olive oil
- reserved onion & garlic from above
- 1 Tablespoon chopped fresh herbs
- 1/2 – 2/3 cup Romesco sauce (recipe here – or you can use store bought)
Instructions
- Saute the onion and garlic in 1 Tablespoon olive oil in a cast iron or other oven-safe pan. Take out about 1/3 of the mixture and set aside. Spread the rest over the bottom of the pan.
- Arrange the thinly sliced veggies around the edge of the pan, following a pattern. I did eggplant, zucchini, potato, tomato and just kept repeating until I made a full circle around the edge. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and fresh herbs and brush liberally with olive oil.
- With the leftover veggies: chop them fine and give them a quick saute in the olive oil.
- Mix the ground meat with the reserved onion and garlic, 2/3 cup of the sauteed veggies, and the remaining ingredients except the Romesco sauce. Make a mound with the meat in the center of the pan.
- Cover with foil and bake at 375 F for 30 minutes.
- Uncover, sprinkle veggies with cheese and spread the sauce over the meatloaf. Bake for 30 minutes more.
Notes
Aside from the tomato, slice the veggies as thin as possible (particularly the potato). Some recommend a mandolin but I prefer a knife for safety sake.
RECIPE SOURCE: Sumptuous Spoonfuls – https://www.sumptuousspoonfuls.com/ … © Copyright 2022, Sumptuous Spoonfuls. All images & content are copyright protected. Please do not use my images without prior permission. If you want to publish any of my images, please ask first. If you want to republish this recipe as your own, please re-write the recipe in your own words or link back to this post for the recipe.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 slice (1/6th of total)
- Calories: 322
- Fiber: 4 g
- Protein: 21 g
Keywords: Meatloaf
2 comments
Comfort food at its best, and I think it is great for entertaining, since it can be made ahead of time. On my to do list. Thank you Ann for sharing!
★★★★★
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