Gratin of squash and Cavolo Nero with a marinaded tofu topping

Here is a savoury winter gratin inspired by the contents of my garden, fridge and cupboards!  Cold-weather comfort food, but pretty healthy with it. It's quite low in fat but if you're feeling purist you might want to be less generous than I was with the sesame oil. 

The recipe is a bit lengthy but the individual stages aren't complicated.  It makes enough for six servings and re-heats well.  You could probably freeze portions, although I've not tried this, but it will also keep in the fridge for a few days.  It's easy enough to scale up or down as required, and the proportions of each component are not critical so long as you make enough tomato sauce to cover the entire gratin dish.   The longer you marinate the tofu the better, within reason.  I've left it for up to three days in the fridge and it was fine.

Ingredients

• 1 winter squash - about 1 kg in weight, we used Potimarron but Butternut would be just as good
• 1 head Cavolo Nero black kale, or equivalent in other nice wintery greens
  
• about 400 g tofu,  sliced and marinaded in a mix of roughly equal parts shoyu and  the juice of a lemon with a splash of chilli oil,  for at least 2 hours (turn over half way)
• 1 large potato (or more smaller ones), peeled, diced and boiled until just tender
• 2 or 3 onions, peeled and chopped
• 3 or 4 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped
• 2 tins chopped tomatoes
• 1 or 2 bay leaves
• salt
  
• 1 teaspoon green peppercorns
• olive oil
• sesame oil (the dark, toasted sort)
  
• a sprinkle of sesame seeds

Method

1. Wash your squash, cut in half and de-deed it, then slice into 1cm slices.  There's no need to peel as the skin is pleasantly edible when cooked.  Toss in a little olive oil and roast  uncovered in a large, shallow roasting tray in a hot oven  (anything up to about 230 deg C), until tender and slightly browned.  Start checking for doneness after 15 minutes. 
2. Make the tomato sauce.  Fry the onions in a little olive oil for a few minutes, add the garlic, bay leaves and green peppercorns and fry a moment or two longer.  Add the chopped tomatoes and salt, then simmer gently for about 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.   If the pan looks to be going a bit dry top up from time to time with a little boiling water from the kettle. 
   
3. When the sauce is cooked you might want to add what's left of the tofu marinade to give it a bit of zing.  Just taste it and see what you think it needs.   At this point I added about 2 tablespoons of sesame oil too - not very orthodox but I wanted something to bring the Italian style of the sauce a bit closer to the oriental-ness of the tofu.  This is fusion food. It worked.
4. Cut out  and discard the thickest bits of the ribs from the Cavolo Nero, shred and wash the greens, then wilt them in the microwave (or a pan), until just tender, using only the water that clings to them after washing.  Drain the hot leaves if necessary and dress them with sesame oil to taste.  Add salt if you want to.
5. Now assemble the gratin.  Arrange the potatoes in amongst the roasted squash (you can do this in the same roasting tray used to cook the squash - save washing up).  Dot piles of Cavolo Nero in amongst, too.  Don't spread the greens out too thinly as you want enough in a mouthful to be able to taste them properly.  The idea is to have all the  vegetable more or less in one layer.
6.  Spoon over the tomato sauce as evenly as possible.  Finally arrange the marinaded tofu slices  on top of the gratin.  If you want to brush them with a little sesame oil that's lovely but you may feel there's enough oil in the dish already.  Sprinkle a few sesame seeds on the tofu slices.
7. Cover the gratin and bake in a hot oven for about 15 minutes, removing the cover for the last 5 minutes or so to allow the tofu/sesame topping to brown.
   

Variation
Add a tin of drained cooked chick peas at step 5 if your squash is a bit small.  This is good from a glycemic load point of view, and also ups the protein content of the dish.