Here’s another one in the “lets bake healthy” campaign- a simple vegetable casserole.

Ingredients:

• 1 head of broccoli(medium in size)
• 1 zucchini (medium in size)
• 1 small onion
• 4-5 pods of garlic
• 1 small tomato
• 1 ½  -2 C of milk
• 1 ½ -2 tbsp wheat wheat flour 
• 1 egg(hard boiled)
• 2 cubes of cheese(grated and totally optional )
• ½ C bread crumbs
• A little butter
• Salt and pepper to taste

 Method:

• Wash and chop the broccoli and zucchini. Finely cut the onion and garlic.
• In a non stick pan, heat ½  tsp oil. Sauté the onion and garlic in the hot oil till lightly brown. Add the cut broccoli and zucchini, add salt, cover and cook till tender.
• To make the white sauce, stir in the wheat flour/aata in a cold cup of milk. You will need to add a little more that  if you want a thicker sauce. This consistency works fine for me but please use your discretion to get the just-right- consistency for your sauce. Pour the milk in a saucepan and cook it till it thicken. Add salt and pepper. Allow to cool slightly.  If you are using cheese, add it to the sauce at this stage.
• Add the cooked broccoli and zucchini to the sauce.
• Pour into an oven proof dish. Place thin slices of tomato and the hard boiled egg over the sauce and vegetables. Cover with bread crumbs. Dot the bread crumb cover with butter. Bake in the oven at 180 deg.C for 10 -12 minutes till the bread crumb cover in nice and crisp and the tomato slices cooked.
• Serve with soup and bread.

 Notes:

This is the first time I tried making white sauce with atta instead of all purpose flour and I have to admit, you can hardly tell the difference. There is a minor difference in the colour of the sauce but other than that you cant even tell you have used atta. I don’t know if eating 2 tbsp of atta instead of maida makes any drastic difference to your health status, but it does feel  good to be doing something in the name of good health!

 Make sure you peal the zucchini before you cook it. If you don’t, it will lend a bitter taste to your dish and you will not  like that! I learnt this  the hard way.

There is no denying that adding cheese makes the dish richer and tastier.But I have also realised that omitting the cheese doesn’t make  any great difference. The casserole tastes fine even without the cheese.May be the sauce isnt as creamy as it is with the cheese, but in the larger objective of consuming less calories, whats a little creaminess, I ask you?

What vegetables you add to the sauce is totally up to you. After discovering the success of the “atta sauce”, I have made many variations of this casserole- with corn, spinach, paneer, with cheese, without cheese, with bread crumbs and without.

After making white sauce with atta, next on agenda- attempting a cake with aata!