RATATOUILLE

Ratatouille is braised mixed vegetable originally from Provance. I love French peasant cooking, it is fresh, friendly and delicious.  The mix vegetables used in the ratatouille are eggplants, zucchini, tomato, capsicum and flavoured by fresh herbs, onion and garlic.  A night with ratatouille was terrific, the dish was appreciated and enjoyed.  Things to remember, cooking ratatouille can not be rushed, it is a very delicate process that you have to follow. Every vegetable has its way of cooking, you have to fry the vegetable separately.  After that steps, continue cooking by cooking them together in a pot pan.  Mix all the fried vegetables and braise together with a little water or tomato puree for 11 - 13 minutes.  You will have creamy and soft cooked vegetables with a rich sauce.  This is the way I cook my ratatouille.

Ingredients for Ratatouille

The vegetable for Ratatouille

Serves for two.

Tomato
Eggplant
Zucchini
Capsicums
Onion
Garlic
Parsley and thyme
Basil leaves
Oil to saute
(vegetable or olive oil)
Water or tomato puree


Method
Use two cooking pans to fry the vegetables at the same time to make the cooking faster.
Fry the chops vegetables (separately) with the vegetable oil until soft.
Finally, the softened and cooked onions-garlic, tomato, eggplants, zucchini and capsicum place in the same pan and add 125ml water, and herbs, put the lid on, and prepare to braise for 11 minutes over low heat.
Take off the lid, stir it gently and keep on cooking over high heat without the lid on for a couple of minutes.
Transfer to a serving plate and garnish with chopped fresh basil and parsley.

I served the ratatouille on a bed of sliced sourdough bread.  I am so proud of the fact that I served the delicious ratatouille with my home-baked sourdough bread-batard. You could serve it with flat pasta or baked potato.

Preparation

Cut and diced the vegetables

Frying the eggplants for 5 minutes

 Cooking the capsicum for 4 minutes

Frying the onions and garlic for 4 minutes

 Frying the zucchini for 3 minutes

 Frying the tomato for 3 minutes

Place all the cooked vegetables into a pan 

and braise them together

The lid on the pan to braise the mixed

cooked vegetables for 11 minutes

Take the lid off, stir the vegetables and

continue cooking for a couple of  minutes

To serve the Ratatouille

I have home-baked sourdough bread ready to help with.  

You could bake your own bread or sourdough the 'batard'.  The recipe,  please look on the older post.  Simply type:  sourdough bread to search.

Home Baked Sourdough Bread Batard

Sliced Batard to Serve the Ratatouille

Ratatouille is Served

Garnish the ratatouille with chopped basil and parsley to serve.

There are methods of how to cook ratatouille.  One of them is by baking the mixed cooked vegetables in an oven until they are very soft, but I have to admit though that I have not done this one yet.  I prefer to cook it over the burners, braise them in a pan.  That way, I can cook the dish during the warm weather to keep the room stays cool.

The vegetable plants for the ratatouille are easy to grow in any one garden, in fact, I did years ago.  After all,  they are very achievable, and they grow in the same season too.  

From my old file, I found the picture of my harvested vegetables, it looks so grand.  I did very well; indeed, it makes me want to do it again.  I have to start and fixing my vegetable patch by improving the soil, cleaning up old plants, and so forth and it will be ready for next spring for planting.  It is going to be great work for us, but we must do it. We shall have fresh vegetables in summer.  The bounty of the summer vegetables will be cooking for the ratatouille.

The harvest from my garden

How lovely it would be to be able to cook the dish freshly from the harvest of your garden.

On that note cooking method for the Ratatouille is simple but it needs patience and time, it is worthwhile to cook in a big batch so you could freeze it or enjoy for the next day.

Cook longer to braise if you like to have the dish very very soft and silky but you may miss the sauce intensity.


Enjoy the recipe and happy cooking.

Until Next Post
Susy