Ratatouille In Style
Ratatouille is one of those dishes that has a million variations. Sauce or no sauce? What kind of sauce? Peppers or no peppers? Some even have potatoes! Sliced or chopped, baked or simmered, the list goes on and on. I personally prefer a tomato and pepper sauce with sliced veggies on top and baked in the oven. I absolutely love the addition of a vinagrette at the end…thank you, Thomas Keller!
With a simple hand mandoline and a few tricks from Keller, you can have delicious ratatouille on a lazy weekend. We took ours for a Sunday dinner with Elizabeth and Brian. It went perfectly with the kale salad and the sausage pasta. And it just looks beautiful. I think we ate the whole thing!
As varied as the ingredients and methods are for ratatouille, so are the spices. No offense to Thomas Keller or anything…I mean the man IS beyond my talents….I just don’t think plain thyme is the way to go. Regardless of all the ways I’ve made ratatouille, it is always with herbs de provence…the one with no lavender. Anything else is blasphemy. Fresh is grand, but I used dried because I’m lazy and it was just fine.
I did, however, roast my own peppers. You could be really lazy and just use a jar of roasted bell peppers, but I like the fresher taste of just roasted peppers and they hold up better. And there’s no weird jar flavor to muck up the sauce. And there must be sauce. It’s half the dish! It’s almost sad to make this dish in any other season the the height of summer because there’s no fresh tomatoes yet. Soon……very soon, though!
My Twist On Keller's Ratatouille
Ingredients
- 3 cans petite diced tomatoes or 4 cups peeled seeded, and chopped fresh tomatoes
- 4 red bell peppers roasted peeled, seeded, and chopped
- 1 half large onion chopped
- 1 giant clove elephant garlic minced
- 2 medium zucchinis
- 2 japanese eggplants
- 8 roma tomatoes
- 3 crookneck squash
- 1/4 cup olive oil plus 2 tablespoons
- 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
- 2 tablespoons herbs de provence
- 2 tablespoons smashed pink peppercorns
- Cooking spray
- Kosher salt
Instructions
- In a saute pan on medium high heat, saute the onions in the olive oil until sofrt, about 15 minutes. When they just start to brown, add the minced garlic. Continue cooking for about 2 or 3 minutes, then add the diced tomatoes and a teaspoon of kosher salt, all the pink peppercorns, and 1 tablespoon of herbs de provence. Lower the heat to simmer, stir to combine, and cook for about 30 minutes.
- Add the chopped roasted red pepper, stir to combine, and let the sauce simmer on the lowest setting for as long as you can. I let mine bubble away for about 2 hours, stirring every so often to prevent burning. I was busy doing chores while this cooked.
- Mandoline all the squash, eggplant, and roma tomatoes in the same thickness, somewhere around a quarter inch thick. Cover the bottom of a large casserole dish with some of the sauce. Arrange the vegetables over the top. I did a zucchini, crookneck, eggplant, tomato arrangement.
- Preheat the oven to 250. Lightly spray the finished casserole with cooking spray. I use the Kirkland brand because it's non GMO, etc, etc. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of herbs de provence over all the vegetables. Cover the casserole dish with parchment paper and place in the center of the oven. Bake for 2 hours or 1 hour on convect.
- Meanwhile, take 1/4 cup of the pepper and tomato sauce and whisk it with the 2 tablespoons of olive oil, a pinch of salt, and 2 tablespoons of really good balsamic vinegar. Pull the casserole out, brush it with the vinaigrette, and return it to the oven uncovered for about 30 minutes or 15 minutes on convect. The leftover sauce can be used to make an amazing salad dressing or a dynamite sauce on a pizza.
Oh my goodness! Those photos are amazing!!! And the dish was certainly equally delicious. It looks as though those peppers are…screaming. ?
I thought they looked sweaty lol