Zucchini Rice Gratin (salt lightly)

With the hardship involved in making meals since we moved into our new house (remember: we live in one half of the house and the fridge lives in the other), we've been lax with meal ideas and dinner has been more a hassle than a joy. On that end, I received a meal idea from my co-worker Rachel, who told me to head on over to the Smitten Kitchen for a recipe of Zucchini Rice Gratin.

Which I did and forwarded the link to my husband. He agreed that it looked like a simple but tasty meal idea and we gathered the ingredients we'd need. If you too would like to gather what you need, find out what that is by visiting the link for Smitten Kitchen in the paragraph above.

While I was on my way home from work, the husband made the rice, chopped up and cooked the veggies, and popped it all into a baking dish in one of our two ovens for 450 degrees F for about 20 minutes. When he popped it back out again, it looked good. Really good. I helped myself to a heaping portion and discovered the problem also noted by Smitten Kitchen itself: Way Too Salty. And keep in mind that this is after the recipe was altered to contain much less salt because the blogger of SK thought the recipe too salty. Oh boy was it. Still.

The problem is that each step of the recipe tells you to add salt. You add it to the veggies before cooking them seperately, you add it to the rice, and you add it once you mix everything together. Did no one tell the inventor of this recipe that a little dab will do you? Did no one think to inform that unknown recipe writer that if you add salted things to a salted thing and add salt, that might lead to an oversalted finale? Either way, I know the answer. Too much salt, there was. And now the husband has learned a valuable lesson: if you think the recipe is asking you to add a ridiculous amount of salt to something, you should probably listen to your gut, as it is going to have to digest that puppy when you eat it.

That aside, the dish was good, and still edible despite its salt-lick nature. Thus, we will make it again and only add the salt at one step instead of to everything.

(And I apologize for the lack of photos. I re-lost my camera in the unpacking hullabaloo. No worries. I have since re-found it again.)