Ready to munch munch munch

I haven’t written for a while. You would think I was preparing for a deep post, full of meaning. Well. Nope. I was busy with, I don’t know, stuff. But I am back with a recipe and you haven’t seen one of those here for a while, right?

This is a veganized version of a traditional Greek recipe that I really love. It is traditionally a summer food as that’s when tomatoes and courgettes taste the best in Greece, but since we live in the Netherlands and we eat greenhouse vegetables anyway, I thought “why not”. And it turned out pretty great actually. OK, enough with the talking! Time to cook 🙂

Before baking

Ingredients

• 4 big tomatoes (there were only tiny ones in the grocery store, that’s why you see so many here)
• 1 courgette
• 5-6 small potatoes
• 1/2 cup soy crumbles
• 1/2 cup rice
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• a few tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon oregano
• salt and pepper to taste

ready to bake

Instructions

• Soak the soy crumbles in 1 cup of water for 10 minutes.
• Cook the rice until it is half/done.
• Lightly oil a baking pan.
• Wash your vegetables.
• Cut the top of the tomatoes and using a spoon empty the seeds in a bowl.
• Cut the courgette in four pieces and use a spoon to empty the inside. Add the parts you remove in the bowl with the tomato seeds.
• Cut the potatoes and arrange them in the baking pan, along with the tomatoes and courgette pieces.
• In the bowl with the tomato seeds add the rice, chopped onion, soy crumbles salt, pepper and oregano.
• Stuff the vegetables with the rice and cover the tomatoes with their top part.
• Drizzle the olive oil on top.
• Cook in the oven at 200 C for about 45 minutes. I cook them covered the first 30 minutes and then I remove the aluminum foil the last 15 minutes.

Enjoy!

Extra notes

• Every oven is different. For combo ovens, you might need to bake your gemista longer.
• You can stuff other vegetables as well. Bell peppers and aubergines work great.
• You can leave out the soy crumbles and add resins to the filling.
• You can add many more spices such as cumin and even a dash of cinnamon or smoked paprika.

Enjoy!