Friday, October 3, 2008

ratatouille



A special request!

Roasted vegetables that you can eat with couscous and bring to work the next day. Sounds like ratatouille... which for whatever reason I have never eaten. What? Didn't I even get a little hungry for it after watching the adorable movie? Don't I eat more zucchini than anyone else I know? Can't everyone cook?



Yeah, but it always seemed like kind of a hassle.

Well, here's the scoop. Ratatouille is a hassle. Start cooking this bastard yesterday. Ratatouille is not a 30 minute meal, or even a 1 hour meal. BUT if you've got time on your hands or want to practice your knife skills (???) or you just got the movie again on netflix and it made you feel culinary or want to feed yourself for like a week on a few dollars worth of veggies, hell yeah.I should note that this is a fake-o version, which my mother says in no way resembles Julia Child's ratatouille. But it is delicious and does look like the one in the movie. Disney knows what's up.



ratatouille!

1 zucchini
1 yellow squash
1 eggplant
1 red pepper, if you're not red pepper averse like me
4 tomatoes (canned or not, whatever, even tomato sauce will work)
a head of garlic, broken into cloves and peeled
1/2 cup olive oil
herbes de provence (what? you don't know what herbes de provence are, you philistine? ok. rosemary, fennel, savory, thyme, basil, tarragon, dill weed, oregano, lavender, chervil and marjoram. or a mix from the grocery store, obviously.)

Preheat the oven to 400

Get married and put a classy Williams Sonoma mandoline on your registry. Or chop the eggplant into "paper-thin" slices. If you hate eggplant like me, you should salt it: rub the slices with lots of salt and let it hang out in a colander until you need them. They will release a lot of water and taste less nasty.

Now chop the squashes. Paper-thin, right? Hahahaha.

If you are using whole tomatoes, cut them into slices. Otherwise, put a sturdy layer of tomato at the bottom of an oven-proof dish. Scatter the garlic cloves in there. Throw in some olive oil and herbes de provence.

Then wash the salt off the eggplant and wring out (hands-on!) and make a nice arrangement of all your rondeles. Pour a serious glug of olive oil on top and sprinkle some more herbes de provence.



Pop that baby in the oven and set a timer for ONE FULL HOUR.

Microwave yourself some fake chicken patties to tide yourself over. Quorn! Soy-free!

Serve with some kind of grain/ cheese. Polenta + mozzarella = not French, but delicious. Recipe for polenta to follow!

Over at the real cooking blog smittenkitchen, Deb has some good ideas for what to do with the leftovers (uh, besides eating them).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Fie on Julia Child's recipe, which does take days to saute everything separately...Yours was delish, Lily, and it is such fun to see and read about all the great meals you've made for us!