Ratatouille

The inspiration for this ratatouille came from Food & Wine October 2011. The original recipe was put together by Melissa Clark arthor of Cook It Now. What I found most fascinating about her recipe is that she cooks the ingredients in smaller batches to cook faster thus not spending a ton of time doing a traditional ratatouille which can be hours. This in contrast with prep time took about an hour. It can be made in advance and heated up and will keep in the fridge, the directions below are for four servings. To keep it vegan hold the goat cheese! And with any stew you need some nice toasted bread to go along with it, and it helps if that bread is garlic!

Ingredients:

• 1 medium eggplant peeled and diced

• 1 small yellow squash

• 1 small zucchini

• 1 medium onion diced medium fine

• 10 to 12 ounces cherry tomatos cut in half

• 1 pound canned or stewed tomatoes (mine were canned from the garden)

• 1/2 cup basil chopped and loosely packed

• 1/3 cup olive oil

• 5 cloves garlic minced

• about 1/2 cup olive oil

• salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Put about 1/4 cup olive oil in a dutch oven and heat until shimmering over medium heat. Add the diced and peeled eggplant cook stirring regularly for five minutes add two cloves of minced garlic and cook another five minutes, adding a bit of salt and pepper. Remember eggplant loves salt so don't add to much.

some of my ingredients waiting

eggplant starting to cook down

Next let the eggplant rest in a bowl, I would suggest pulling it out with a slotted spoon to keep any olive oil in the dutch oven. Add a a bit more olive oil to the same pot and next add the onions, after the onions have cooked to be translucent add the squash and zucchini.

Squash and zucchini just added

After about five minutes still over medium heat add the cherry tomatoes and two more cloves or garlic and half the basil.

Just added

Let the tomatos cook until the are releasing a lot of juice and then added the stewed tomatoes.

More tomatos added

Add the last clove of garlic and cook on low heat for at least 20 minutes then add the rest of the fresh basil cook for another five minutes. Plate and enjoy, seen below with goat cheese and garlic bread!

Yum and done!