Recipe: Ratatouille

With all the great summer produce around, I love making this vegetable stew. It’s great for vegetarians –serve it with rice or couscous — and meat lovers enjoy this dish too. This recipe takes a little time but the final result is very tasty.

Ingredients:

1 large eggplant cut into chunky pieces
3 medium courgettes, thickly sliced (that’s zuchinni in the US)
1/2 cup olive oil
2 red capsicums
3 cloves garlic, sliced
2 red onions, sliced
1/2 cup red wine
4 large ripe outdoor tomatoes, chopped (or 400g can chopped tomatoes)
1 tablespoon oregano
sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup torn basil leaves

METHOD 1:Brush eggplant and courgettes with oil and grill or barbecue until tender. Cook capsicum on barbecue or grill until skin blisters and blackens. Allow to cool slightly and then rub off skin, remove seeds and cut into strips. Heat a little oil in a large frying pan and gently cook garlic and onion until tender. Add the eggplant, peppers and zucchini to the pan along with the remaining olive oil, red wine, tomatoesm oregano and olives. Season with sea salt and cover and cook until vegetables are tender.
Sprinkle with torn basil leaves and freshly ground black pepper.

METHOD 2: The above is the actual recipe from the Foodlovers.co.nz site. I use a slightly different method. I chop the eggplant, courgettes, capsicum, and onion into bite sized pieces and place on an oven tray. I add cloves of garlic and toss all the vegetables in oil, black pepper and sea salt. I cook for about half an hour in a medium oven. Then I toss the lot in a pot with a can of tomatoes, red wine and oregano and cook for around ten minutes until the tomatoes have reduced and the vegetables are tender. Serve with rice or couscous and garnish with torn basil leaves.

I like the second method because it’s easier and everything is cooked together, but it’s a lot tastier than when I used to cook everything in a pot.