Ratatouille

A light, refreshing and vegan-friendly french meal, which will bring back memories of your grandma cooking (assuming you live in France 😎)

Ratatouille

A light, refreshing and vegan-friendly french meal, which will bring back memories of your grandma cooking (assuming you live in France 😎)

While originally this recipe is just a simplest dish of Provence peasants, it is actually not that easy to make, especially if you want to go fancy with it.

Ingredients for 2-3 servings

🫑Bell pepper - 1 pc. (medium)
🍅Tomato puree (not paste, but mashed tomatoes, usually sold in a tetra pack) - 150ml
🧅Shallot - 1 pc.
🧄Garlic - 2 cloves
🌿Thyme and rosemary - 1 sprig
🍆Eggplant, zucchini - half of each
🍅Tomato - 2 pc. (medium)
🫒Olive oil - 1 tsp
🧂Dried basil and oregano - 0.5 tsp

When picking the vegetables, try to pick them such that they end up roughly the same size for everything to line up properly.

Let's get cooking!

Preheat the oven to 220-230 °С and remove the seeds from the pepper.
Bake the pepper for about 15-20 minutes. After that, let it cool, remove the skin and cut into small cubes.
Cut the shallots into the same sized cubes. Fry them in a skillet with a bit of olive oil over medium heat for a couple of minutes, until the onions become translucent.
Add mashed tomatoes, sprigs of thyme and rosemary, and garlic passed through a press to the pan. Cover the pan with a lid and reduce the heat to a minimum, simmer for about 5 minutes. You should get a medium thick sauce.
Now, let's get started with vegetables.
Eggplants, tomatoes and zucchini should all be the same diameter. Cut all the ingredients into thin circles.
Send the eggplants to swim in salted cold water for 10 minutes to neutralize the bitterness, after which we dry them with a paper towel.
Put the sauce on the bottom of the baking dish, taking out the thyme and rosemary from it. Spread the vegetables around the dish, alternating them. Sprinkle with dried herbs on top and cover with foil.
Cook the dish at 180 °С for an hour, after which remove the foil and cook for another 15-20 minutes.