Greek Briam

Preheat the oven to 190°C (170°C fan / 375°F). Prepare all the vegetables: peel the potatoes and cut them into 1cm rounds — uniform thickness is important so everything cooks evenly; the potato is the densest vegetable in the dish and needs to be thin enough to cook through in the same time as the courgette and aubergine. Cut the courgette and aubergine into 1cm rounds. Slice the tomatoes into 1cm rounds. Halve the red onions and slice thinly. Thinly slice the garlic. In a large bowl, combine the tinned chopped tomatoes, 60ml of the olive oil, the dried oregano, half the chopped parsley, the caster sugar, salt, and black pepper. Stir to combine — this is the base sauce that will sit beneath the vegetables and baste them from below as they roast. Pour this tomato base into a large, deep roasting dish or baking tray (approximately 30 × 40cm) and spread it evenly across the base.

Scatter the sliced red onion and garlic evenly over the tomato base. Now layer the prepared vegetables in the roasting dish in overlapping, upright rows — stand the rounds of potato, courgette, aubergine, and tomato on their edges in alternating sequence, leaning them against each other like a deck of cards fanned out across the dish. The classic briam arrangement is a single, tightly packed layer of alternating vegetable rounds, all facing the same direction, so the cut surfaces are exposed to the heat and can caramelise. Pack them snugly — the vegetables will shrink significantly during roasting and a loosely packed dish will look sparse by the end. Tuck the fresh thyme sprigs between the vegetables. Drizzle the remaining 60ml of olive oil generously and evenly over the entire surface of the layered vegetables, making sure every exposed surface gets some oil. Season the top with a little extra salt and a few grinds of black pepper. The olive oil is not optional and should not be reduced — it is the cooking medium, the basting liquid, and a major component of the flavour of the finished dish.

Cover the roasting dish tightly with foil. Place in the preheated oven and roast covered for 50–55 minutes — the foil traps steam and allows the vegetables to cook through gently without drying out or burning. After 50 minutes, remove the foil and check the potatoes by piercing the thickest round with a knife; they should be just tender. If they still feel firm, replace the foil and roast for a further 10 minutes before checking again. Once the potatoes are tender, remove the foil completely and increase the oven temperature to 210°C (190°C fan / 410°F). Roast uncovered for a further 30–35 minutes, until the top layer of vegetables is deeply golden and caramelised at the edges — the courgette and aubergine rounds should have dark, slightly charred edges, the tomato rounds will have collapsed and concentrated into a jammy, sweet layer, and the whole surface of the dish will be glistening and fragrant. The uncovered roasting stage is what transforms briam from a simple baked vegetable dish into something extraordinary; do not cut it short.

Remove the briam from the oven and leave to rest for 10–15 minutes before serving. The resting time allows the juices to settle and the dish to cool slightly — briam is always served warm rather than piping hot, and like gemista and mujaddara, it is genuinely excellent at room temperature the following day when the flavours have had time to deepen and meld. Scatter the remaining fresh parsley generously over the surface just before serving. Bring the roasting dish to the table and serve directly from it — the dish looks beautiful in its roasting pan, the caramelised vegetables glistening in the olive oil and tomato juices. Spoon generous portions onto plates, making sure each serving gets some of the rich, reduced tomato sauce from the base of the dish. Serve with crusty gluten-free bread for mopping up the juices — the cooking liquid is deeply flavoured and is as much a part of the dish as the vegetables themselves.