Ratatouille

The meat and the vegetarian option both sit on a bed of ratatouille – we try to keep both options as similar as possible.

The ratatouille is very simple to make. It is a pizzaiola sauce – which is simply tinned tomatoes simmered with herbs - with sauteed red onion, red pepper, courgette (zucchini) and aubergine (eggplant). 

Ratatouille

Servings

8

servings
Prep time

30

minutes
Cooking time

40

minutes
Cook Mode

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Ingredients

  • For the pizzaiola sauce:
  • 1 1 Onion

  • 2 2 Garlic Cloves

  • 400 g 14 oz tinned chop tomatoes

  • 1 tbsp 1 tbsp tomato purée

  • 1 tsp 1 tsp dried oregano - if you don’t have dried oregano you can use dried marjoram or thyme or even parsley or perhaps general purpose Italian seasoning

  • 1 tsp 1 tsp basil (fresh otherwise dried)

  • 1 1 bay leaf

  • 1 tsp 1 tsp caster sugar

  • Ratatouille vegetables
  • 1 1 large red onion (double if small)

  • 1 1 red pepper

  • 2 2 large courgettes (zucchini)

  • 1 1 aubergine

  • olive oil for frying

Equipment

  • Chopping board
  • Knife
  • Pan
  • Bowl

Directions

  • Pizzaiola sauce:

  • Gather your ingredients


  • Peel and finely dice the onion
    Peel and finely dice the garlic


  • Add the olive oil to a pan
    Turn on the heat
    Add the diced onion
    Turn down the heat to sweat the onion (which means cooking at a low temperature so the onion softens but does not brown – this will take around 15 minutes
  • When the onion is soft – add the diced garlic and cook for one minute – be careful not to burn the garlic because it will taste bitter
  • Add all the other ingredients – tomatoes, herbs and tomato paste - to the pan
    Turn up the heat to bring the pan to a simmer – then turn down the heat to maintain the simmer
    Continue to simmer for 60 minutes
  • Remove from the heat
    Take out the bay leaf and discard it
    The sauce is ready
  • Ratatouille vegetables
  • Gather your ingredients
  • Chop all the ingredients into roughly the same size small dice – around ½ cm (1/5 inch)
  • Put some oil in the pan
    Saute the onion – which means cook it gently until it is soft – around 5-10 minutes
    Put the onion into the bowl
  • Add more oil to the pan
    Saute the red pepper – again 5-10 minutes until it is soft
    Tip the red pepper into the bowl with the onion
  • Add more oil to the pan
    Saute the courgette (zucchini) – again 5-10 minutes until soft
    Tip the courgette into the bowl with the onion and red pepper
  • Add more oil to the pan
    Saute the aubergine (zucchini) – again 5-10 minutes until soft – note that aubergine will soak up the oil very quickly so make sure all the pieces are coated as soon as you put them into the pan – don’t add more oil though because then aubergine becomes too oily.
    Tip the aubergine into the bowl with the onion and red pepper
  • Now you are going to concasse the tomato! This is the only bit of technique in this dish.
    To concasse just means to skin the tomato and remove the pips so you are left with the flesh only.
    Actually it is dead simple. The first task is to remove the skim – there is an easy trick to this.

    Take each tomato and cut a cross into the bottom – don’t cut deeply – just deep enough to cut the skin.
  • Get two similar sized bowls out (each big enough to accommodate all your tomatoes). 
    Fill one bowl with cold water. 
    Add your tomatoes to the empty bowl.
    Boil the kettle. 
    Pour boiling water over the tomatoes and time 30 seconds.
    Remove the tomatoes from the boiled water and drop them into the cold water.
  • Grab one tomato – hopefully you will see the skin at the cut cross starting to peel away - with a small knife peel away the skin from the cut cross so that you eventually peel the whole tomato. 
    Do the same with all your tomatoes.
  • Cut each peeled tomato in half – with a small knife cut out the white pith and seeds and scoop them out.
    You should now be left with the flesh of the tomato.
  • Chop up the flesh of all your tomatoes into small dice – about the same size as the other ratatouille vegetables.
  • Add the chopped vegetables to the pizzaiola sauce.
    It is done – all you do now is to warm the combined sauce when you are ready to serve.

Recipe Video

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