Ratatouille
The Dish
Ratatouille
Best for: Dinner, Lunch
Serves: 4
Prep time: 30mins
Cook time: 1hour
This is a real show stopper and tastes utterly amazing. The rich tomato base and perfectly roasted vegetables truly are a match made in heaven.
An amazing starter or side dish.
You can also add a little mozzarella for the last 10 minutes of roasting so it melts over the vegetables and finish off with a drizzle of pesto.
The Recipe
Step 1
Finely dice your onion, add to a pan with a little olive oil on a medium-high heat and cook for 5-7 minutes until soft and turned translucent. Frequently stir your onions to ensure they don’t burn.
Step 2
Dice the pepper and add to the onions along with the minced garlic and cook for a further 2 minutes. Then add the chopped tomatoes, passata, roughly chopped basil leaves, salt and pepper. Reduce the heat and leave to gently simmer.
Step 3
While the sauce is simmering, prep your veg. I use a mandolin as it’s quickly and also ensures equal cutting, however, it’s not essential and a knife will do the same job - just will take a little longer.
Slice the courgettes, aubergines and tomatoes into equal sized disks, about the thickness of a pound coin.
Your aubergines might be significantly larger than the rest of your veg, if this is the case simply cut the disks into quarters.
Step 4
Now it’s time to assemble your ratatouille.
Take a large oven proof dish, add the tomato sauce to the base. Ensure to adjust the seasoning if necessary of the sauce before adding it to the dish.
Start from the outside and follow the shape of the dish. Take a piece of each veg, for example: aubergine, yellow courgette, green courgette and tomato. Stick with the same pattern and start to arrange the veggies on top of the sauce from the outer edge to the middle of the pan.
Step 5
Pre-heat oven to fan 200 degrees C.
Once you have arranged all the veggies, make the herb dressing.
Finely chop the bail, parsley and thyme leaves and add to a small bowl. Add the mince garlic, oli, salt and pepper and mix well. If the dressing is a little thick, simply add a little more oli. Drizzle the herb dressing over the vegetables.
Step 6
If your dish has a lid, place the lid on and roast for 45mins, if you don’t have a lid simply cover with foil. After 45mins remove the lid (or foil) and roast for a further 15-20mins until your veggies are soft and tender, and just starting to turn golden brown at the edges.
INGREDIENTS
Tomato base
1 tin chopped tomatoes (400g)
250g passata
1 large red onion
3 cloves garlic - minced
1 red pepper
10g basil
Veg
2 green courgette
2 yellow courgette
2 aubergines
10 rona tomatoes
Herb dressing
15g fresh basil
15g fresh parsley
5g fresh thyme
1 garlic clove - minced
1.5 tbsp olive oil
