Briam Is for EVOO Lovers

Brion is a simple Greek dish that celebrates the wide variety of summer produce. Today, Becky's going to show us how it's made. This is such a great dish. Vegetables as a main course. I love it. They get soft and tender. They soak up lots of olive oil. Their flavor gets concentrated. It's really a lovely dish. I'm looking forward to showing it to you. We're going to start with some veggie prep. I have a pound of Yukon gold potatoes. I'm going to cut them quarter inch thick. All right. So a pound of potatoes. Then I have one onion. I'm going to cut it in half. And then I'll slice it through the root end. All right. So we'll put our onions here. All right. Next up is a bell pepper, a green one. They have a little bit of bitterness, which is really nice with the olive oil and the sweetness of the tomatoes. That bitterness kind of has a grassy overtones that I find really appealing. I'm into them. So I cut my pepper in half. I'm going to pull out the ribs and seeds here. So I'll just cut them like this for the peppers. I want about two inch matchsticks. Next up, we have zucchini and we want a total of 12 ounces of zucchini. You want these little small ones for this recipe. The smaller ones have fewer seeds, so you get more of that yummy flesh and again, quarter inch. All right. And lastly, we want a pound and a half of tomatoes. That's about three nice round tomatoes here. And this is this is best with, you know, really good farmers market tomatoes. But I've made it with supermarket tomatoes and honestly, it turns out really well with supermarket tomatoes, too. You just don't want to use plum tomatoes for this recipe. They're a little bit too dry. Mm hmm. And now we're ready to assemble the dish. OK, so we have our pound of Yukon Gold's and there's really no particular way that the veggies should be sliced or layered. But this is just how we decided to do it. We're going to make a nice, sturdy base with the potatoes. So a third of a cup of olive oil. And this is the time to get out the good stuff. OK, so use really nice olive oil here. You want to taste that fruitiness, the grassiness. It's one of the primary flavorings in the dish. Three garlic cloves minced up and half teaspoon salt. OK, and now we'll add half of our onions. There's half of the onions. And now I'm going to add half teaspoon of dried oregano and a half teaspoon of black pepper. All right. Now we'll add our bell pepper and I like building all these beautiful layers, all the different colors. Yeah. OK, now the rest of our onion. OK, now I have three sliced garlic cloves, a little different type of garlic essence there. We had the minced ones that were mixed in with potatoes, the potatoes and the olive oil in the base. Yep. It's almost treating the garlic like its own little vegetable. Yeah, exactly. So there's our garlic. More oregano. This is a half a teaspoon. Every piece of veggie is going to be just perfect. OK. And then a quarter teaspoon of salt. I love how you season each layer of vegetable with sort of a repeating flavor so that the whole thing will come together in the end. Yeah, that's it. Every little piece is going to be just right. That was a quarter teaspoon of pepper that I just put on. All right. Here goes our zucchini. That was 12 ounces. And let's add our tomatoes. Oh, so everything gets basted in that glorious tomato juice. All right. Kind of layer these on top, sort of shingle them a little bit. All right. That looks pretty good to me. That looks great. Yeah. All right. So now I'm going to hit it with another third of a cup of olive oil. And I know it's a lot of olive oil, but that's what this dish is all about. We want the veggies to soak up all that delicious flavor. OK. And then half teaspoon of salt because we want these tomatoes to be beautifully seasoned, of course. And a quarter teaspoon of pepper. And that's all it takes. I mean, for the amount of work that's required for this dish, you get a huge payoff. Oh, I love it. Yeah, I'm a really big fan of this dish. OK. So I'm going to cover this with a sheet of foil. When we didn't do that, the tomatoes dried out a little bit on top, and we don't want that to happen. We want to preserve all their beautiful juices. Seal the sides, but I'm going to leave the ends open. All right. So this is going into a 400 degree oven for 30 minutes. Then I'll take off the foil, and then I'll let it go for another 40 to 50 minutes until everything is really nice and tender. Ooh, sounds delicious. Yeah. Take our recipes and reviews wherever you go with the America's Test Kitchen mobile app. Fail-proof recipes, unbiased equipment reviews, how-to videos, and a vibrant community of like-minded home cooks. With smart searching and handy tools, you'll have everything you need to create the most amazing meals. Download the America's Test Kitchen mobile app today. All right. It's been 80 minutes. Let's see. Oh. Ooh. I like what I see. Me too. All right. Everything's bubbling in that amazing olive oil. Oh, I know. Look at that. Mm. It is scorching hot, huh? Yeah. So, so good. The tomatoes have collapsed. They've started to brown a little bit at the edges. Mm-hmm. I'm just going to poke in with my paring knife here. I want to make sure the potatoes are tender. And they are. They're meltingly soft. Ooh. I'm excited to taste this. Me too. We're going to let it cool for 20 minutes. You could also serve this at complete room temperature. You could serve it chilled even. It's kind of anything goes. I like that. Yeah. So, we'll come back in 20 minutes and we'll give it a try. Okay. All right. It's been cooling for 20 minutes. This looks amazing, Becky. Yeah. I'm really looking forward to digging in here. I'm going to add a quarter cup of parsley on top. Oh, a nice fresh hit of something green. Yeah. All right. Can I serve you? Yes. Oh. Look at that. Ooh. The veggies soaked up all the beautiful olive oil. It's like a self-made sauce. Yes, exactly. All right. I got us some really nice bread to go with it because we have to soak up all that olive oil. Yum. And then a great feta cheese is also traditional to serve with this. Oh. I'm also going to give you a little more of this olive oil. Oh, hello. There you go. All right. The potatoes soaked up all those various flavors that they were basted with, but it still tastes pretty clean and fresh. Yeah. You taste the oregano. You taste the garlic. Nothing's overpowering. No. It's just a nice melding of flavors. Yeah. Everything's meltingly tender. Mm. Oh. Oh, and the bread. A little bread and feta mixed in. Oh, my gosh. This is my perfect meal, Julia. I can agree with you. Yeah. Oh, hello. Mm. With the feta, it just changed everything. It's magical. I like the added potatoes. I like the onions going in there raw with the green peppers. And it's a bit more rustic. Yeah. And it's so simple. And it's just, you know, taking advantage of all this beautiful summer produce and making something, a gorgeous meal out of it. This is fantastic. Thank you, Becky. Mm. You're welcome. You want to make this lovely, simple Greek dish, start by slicing the potatoes. quarter-inch thick. Season the layers with salt, dried oregano, and good olive oil. And cook it for 80 minutes, removing the foil partway through. From America's Test Kitchen, a simple but stunning recipe for briome. You can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season, along with select episodes and our product reviews, at our website, americastestkitchen.com slash tv. This is killer. I know. I am in love with this. We hope you enjoyed this video as much as we enjoyed making it. Don't forget to hit that like button and subscribe to our channel. And if you're ready to take your cooking to the next level, head over to americastestkitchen.com and get a free, all-access trial membership. 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