Easy and Delicious Ratatouille Recipe

Ever since the movie Ratatouille came out – about the cartoon rat who wanted to cook – I’ve wanted to create something similar to his signature dish.  I even took a comprehensive classical cooking course and we learned how to make it so the flavors were distinct and you could taste each veggie on its own even when mixed together in the same spoonful.

But I still wanted that beautiful dish that the silly cartoon rat in the movie made!  The day before my husband came home from New York I found a video from Goodful that inspired this.  You can make several batches so you can have this ready to snack on for the rest of the week.

Ingredients:

• Avocado oil spray
• 1/2 chopped  Red pepper
• 1/2 chopped sweet Onion
• 6-8 Roma tomatoes
• 1 eggplant
• 2 zucchini
• 2 yellow squash
• 1 can 28 oz crushed tomatoes (or diced tomatoes that you can blend)
• 3-5 cloves Garlic (use more if you want more garlic flavor)
• Small bunch of chopped Basil
• Salt and pepper to taste (non-iodized salt, Diamond, or Mortons brands)
• *Optional 1/4 cup chopped sun-dried tomatoes (dried)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400
2. Slice zucchini, yellow squash, tomatoes and eggplant into circles.  *For the eggplant cut into quarters or eighths.  Set aside.
3. Lightly spray avocado oil in a pan that can cook on the stovetop and go into the oven.  *We use cast-iron skillets.
4. Saute onion over med-high heat until translucent.
5. Add garlic.  *We use 5, but 3 is plenty if you want a softer flavor.
6. *Optional – add sun-dried tomatoes
7. Add red pepper and saute until soft – about 7 minutes.
8. Add can of crushed tomatoes.
9. Add 1/4 of the basil, salt, and pepper to taste.  Cook for 2 minutes until it’s all stirred in.  Set aside
10. Stack 1 of each zucchini, yellow squash, tomato, and eggplant.  Place into the pan around the edge and keep the pattern going until the pan is filled and looks like the photo.  *In the photo I stacked it so it was standing up.  You can stack it so it lays down flat (like in the movie).  
11. Top the ratatouille with basil, salt and pepper to taste.
12. Cover with foil.  
13. Bake for 60 minutes.

If possible, make extra batches because it tastes just as good the next few days when you reheat it.  Enjoy!

Kirin Christianson