Robust Ratatouille

Hey guys!

I wanted to create some new simple dishes that my family enjoy that are super light and can be tempting for both meat and fish eaters, as well as the plant based superstars that I am writing the blogs for. Everything I’m doing is vegan, but I want people to find the recipes who aren’t vegan, and then show them that it’s just as fab. So here’s a ratatouille, I did some fish and bread to go with it, which is not involved in the recipe whatsoever and we will skip merrily past it. The dish itself is just an intensely delicious stew dish that you can have as a main or a side.

Ingredients

• 2 x Large Courgette

• 2 x Large Sweet Red Peppers

• 1 x Yellow Bell Pepper

• 1 x Packet Sweet Vine Tomatoes

• 5 x Cloves Garlic

• Rosemary

• Black Pepper

• Chives

• Basil

• Thyme

• White Salt

• Dried Rosemary

• Dried Onion Powder

• Olive Oil

• White Wine

• 1 Tin Chopped Tomatoes

So this is a super easy version as normally you assemble the whole thing into this very beautiful pattern of vegetables, and the reason for that is I am not massively a fan of courgettes. You can use a yellow squash or aubergine for this too, but whenever people have served me in restaurants this dish, I think it’s like squeaky and has a green note in that just doesn’t register as properly cooked. So I’ve amended it so it’s more about the sweet pepper texture, there is as much peppers and tomatoes as there is courgettes and it is way more simpler to assemble.

So there is two parts, one part is the sauce, the other part is the baking dish of vegetables. So let’s start with the prep work for the vegetables as it’s really easy. You need to get some delicious, sweet tomatoes and I got these off the vine packet. There was probably about 10 tomatoes and they were medium in size, I finely sliced them up and just added some rock salt to my plate whilst I worked on the other vegetables. I took two pretty large yellow bell peppers, sliced those up and set them aside. I wanted to par boil these and some sliced up green courgettes, so chopped two courgettes up and added that to a pot of boiling water, brought it down to a simmer and took about 6 minutes, then for a further 4 I added the yellow peppers (totally 10 minutes). I don’t want them to soften much all just to loosen a little bit in texture. Then when they were done, I drained, removed all excess water, added some rock salt and combined with the tomatoes to the dish. Then I used a tsp of white pepper and a large drizzle of olive oil.

Next is the sauce, and this is the wow part of the dish because it’s where I created this into my own thing completely. I took two large sweet pointed peppers, they’re not the spicy variety they’re just super sweet. Finely sliced them up and fried with some olive oil in a pan until they are softened. This can take about 15 minutes. Next add some chopped up garlic cloves, I used 5 but you can try whatever you fancy. Next add a tsp of chives, 2tsp of dried rosemary, 2tsp of dried basil, 1tsp of dried thyme, 1tsp of black pepper and a splash of white wine. Leave to simmer for another 10 minutes and you’ll have the most delicious sauce. Blend into a super smooth sauce when it’s cooled down and then you have the two components ready to pop into a roasting dish.

So there you have it! You just line the vegetables with the sauce, bake in the oven at 190C for about 25 minutes or until the vegetables soften. You can cover this with some baking foil if you like. It’s so easy so no excuses, and goes amazing with any type of protein whether you like fish, obviously I do not, so I had it in a bowl with some crusty bread I made.

Let me know what you think about making this yourself!