Ratatouille
Prep time: 30 minutes
Cook time: 1 hour
Serves: 4 people
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Ratatouille
- Prep time: 30 minutes
- Cook time: 1 hour
- Total time: 1 hour 30 minutes
- Serves: 4 people
Looking for a cheap meal to knock your guests off their feet? Look no further as this dish is so mouth watering to look at, a piece of overseasoned and burned chicken fillet drowned in sunflower oil will look gorgeous beside it. It's really easy to make, costs close to nothing when making during spring or summer when all the vegetables are in harvesting season. The only minus is it's time consumption but believe me it's worth every cut. Ratatouille can be served as a main, or side to almost anything. My personal favourite is having a cold spoonfull leftover over toasted bread.
Ingredients
- 8 plum tomatoes
- 2 yellow onions
- 100 gr celery root
- 3-4 cloves garlic
- 1 bay leaf
- 2 bell peppers
- 1 medium eggplant
- 2 zucchini
- 1 red onion
- 5-6 basil leaves
- 1 sprig thyme
Method
- 1)
Start by preparing the sauce: In a medium sized pot on medium-high heat pour enough olive oil to cover the bottom and add diced onions, diced celery root and bay leaf.
- 2)
Saute for a couple minutes then add diced bell peppers (Don’t add them right away with the onions because they will leak out too much water and make your onions cook).
- 3)
Once your onions are beautifully golden brown and tender add your minced garlic and your peeled and diced tomatoes. Most easy way to peel tomatoes is to submerge them into boiling water for 2-3 minutes and then transfer to cold water, (Blanching) that way skin will come out just by giving the tomatoes a slight pinch. Also try to remove as much seeds and water as possible.
- 4)
Depending on the texture and density of the tomatoes you might need to add some liquid to help the sauce develop. Water/veggie stock/passata.
- 5)
Cook for 15-20 minutes then take off the heat and and blend the sauce with a hand mixer. If it’s still too watery place back on heat and reduce until you get somewhat of a “muddy” texture. You can’t have the tomato sauce too watery because it will overfill the baking dish with water and make your whole meal watery.
- 6)
Once done, pour the sauce into your round baking dish and sprinkle over chopped basil leaves.
- 7)
Now preheat the oven to 180*C.
- 8)
Slice your tomatoes tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, red onions into roughly 5 mm thick circles and start arranging on top of the sauce in a loop like pattern (tomato-onion-eggplant-zucchini-tomato…)
Now if you’re a perfectionist and have severe OCD you might want to look for same diameter veggies to make your ratatouille as perfect as possible, but once this dish is filled, and baked it’s going to look amazing, plus you’re not gonna find eggplants and plum tomatoes same size that aren’t gmo.
- 9)
Once the pattern is completed. drizzle over olive oil, chopped basil, chopped thyme, salt and pepper and cover with aluminium foil.
- 10)
Place inside a preheated oven on 180*C and bake for 35 minutes, then uncover and bake for another 20 minutes so the veggies become beautifully crispy.