Ratatouille

This. Was. So. Good.

...If I might say so myself!

We made this in my culinary class today, to practice our knife skills! As you can see, there is lots of slicing and dicing to be done, so make sure you have nice sharp knives before making this one. It'll make things go much easier!

We each were cooking a batch for just ourselves, so this recipe only made about 2.5 cups, which might be either two "side dish" servings, or 1 big, single serving.

Ingredients

1 medium onion, diced

1/2 medium zucchini, diced

1/2 small eggplant, diced

2-3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced or minced

1 plum tomato, diced

2 tbsp finely chopped flat leaf parsley

1/2 green bell pepper, diced

Salt

Black Pepper

Extra virgin olive oil

Water

Cooking Method

Heat 2-3 tbsp olive oil in pan.

Add eggplant. Sprinkle pinch of salt. Sauté. Add a drizzle of oil as it dries up. Cook to brown.

Remove eggplant from pan. Add another drizzle of oil as needed to prevent burning and sticking. Add bell pepper and onion. Sprinkle salt. Sauté and cook until browned. 

Add zucchini. Cook for several minutes. May want to add a little more oil again. 

Add garlic to side of pan. Tilt pan so that oil pools over garlic and sautées for a minute, just until fragrant and barely browned. 

Mix garlic into other vegetables in pan. Cook several more minutes.

Add tomatoes, eggplant, and deglaze pan with about 1/2 cup water. Season with pepper. Stir and let simmer until juices are just nearly reduced completely. (Can be repeated with the water to make vegetables stew longer and become even softer)

Add parsley. Cook another minute. Taste, and adjust seasoning. 

Serve hot! 

Notes: 

A number of other yummy veggies could be substituted as well! Adding mushrooms (eg. assorted, button, shittake, portobella) would be really good too. Try experimenting and see what works well together--that's always been the fun part of cooking to me! 

Just remember to cook similarly textured veggies together (eg. Crunchy, juicy onions and bell peppers cook at about the same rate, whereas eggplant and zucchini are softer and will cook faster)

When multiplying this recipe to serve more people, you may have to work in batches--make sure the veggies aren't overcrowded for best results--too much at one time will keep it from browning as well...cook only enough to cover the bottom of the skillet at a time.