Mais oui, Ratatouille!

I'll apologize in advance for not having any photos of this beautiful dish--the last time I made it, I didn't take any, and I won't be able to for another few weeks! I'm sorry! But once you taste it, you will forgive all my sins...

Yes, today, my friends, is the day that I let you in on a little something I picked up recently. Not in my travels, unfortunately--I had no oven whilst living in Paris--but just wondering aloud what to do with the beautiful zucchini, yellow squash, and eggplant I had lying around. And then it came to me: ratatouille! We all know ratatouille as a bit, well...soggy. And I wanted to give it a bit of a makeover. This recipe was inspired by Thomas Keller's confit byalidi, which is the recipe actually used in the movie! It's colorful and delicious, but looked a bit complicated, so here's my simplified version. I serve over quinoa, topped with some delicious feta.

Oven-baked Ratatouille 

Ingredients

For the tomato sauce 

1 onion, finely chopped 

2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

1 cup of tomato puree (see my recipe here)

A glug or two of olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

For the vegetable topping

1 small eggplant

1 small-medium zucchini

1 small-medium yellow squash 

1 small red pepper

2 small onions

A few glugs of olive oil

Yellow curry powder (that's right, curry!)

For the quinoa bottom

1/2 cup of quinoa

1 cup of vegetable stock (or chicken/turkey or water)

Directions

Start by preheating your oven to 375 degrees F. 

Pour the tomato paste into the bottom of an oval baking dish (approx. 10 inches long) and stir in the onion, garlic and olive oil. Season generously with salt and pepper. 

Trim the ends off of the onions, zucchini, yellow squash, eggplant and bell pepper (be careful here, try to leave the insides intact like a tube). Cut all your vegetables into very thin slices--I don't have a mandoline, but I hear they're great; I use a sharp knife, and it's fine. This doesn't have to be perfect! 

On top of the tomato sauce, arrange slices of the prepared vegetables around the edge, alternating vegetables and working inward, so that each overlaps with the previous. You want a little bit of each flat surface to show. Drizzle some olive oil atop the vegetables, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Season with as much curry as you like, or you can leave it out if you'd like. 

Cover the dish with a piece of parchment paper that has been cut to fit inside. Bake for approximately 45 minutes, or until the vegetables have softened a bit--you want some structure left, but you also want the liquid to have been released. They should not yet be brown at the edges, and you may see liquid bubbling at the edges of the parchment paper. 

While your ratatouille is in the oven, combine 1/2 cup quinoa with 1 cup stock of your choice/water, and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and let cook until all the liquid is absorbed, about 10 minutes total. 

Serve your ratatouille over quinoa, and sprinkle some feta cheese on top. 

Oh, la la!

Perhaps a rat, albeit a cartoon one, is not exactly what you expected when you clicked through to my blog. But this little rat is a hint about what we'll be creating today! Can you guess? 

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Well, first, I'm going to share my recipe for tomato paste with you, because the Mystery Recipe calls for tomato paste, and the stuff from the can--while convenient--is awful. And since you're a great cook, you know it's very easy to make your own tomato paste! 

Basically, tomato paste is just a lot of tomatoes that have been reduced, and then reduced, and then reduced some more. It's great for a day like today--rainy, gross and cold--when you can monitor the stove but still have work to do. This recipe is time intensive, but for most of it you're just letting the tomatoes do their thing (this doesn't mean that you shouldn't keep an eye on them!)

Home-made Tomato Paste

Side note: the amount of tomatoes you use for this recipe depends upon how much paste you want--remember, you can store it and save it for later! I've used about 17lbs of tomatoes and gotten about 8 cups of paste. For this recipe I will operate under that assumption, but you can reduce the ingredients as necessary.

Ingredients

17lbs of roma tomatoes

A few glugs of olive oil

2-3 teaspoons of salt

Directions

Fill a large pot with water, and bring to a boil. While your water is heating up, cut a cross on the bottom of your tomatoes. Pop your tomatoes into the water (you can do this in groups, obviously) and let them cook for a few minutes, until the skin starts to come off. Let them cool down a bit and peel off the skin. Slice the tomatoes in half, cut out the hard core and, if you'd like, scoop out the seeds (you can leave them in for texture if you'd like). 

Chop up the tomatoes and add them, with the salt, to a pot and simmer for about an hour. Make sure you stir often to prevent the tomatoes from sticking to the bottom of the pan and burning! Remove the tomatoes from heat and process through a blender until smooth. Return the tomatoes to the pot and continue to cook them very slowly for about another 2-3 hours, until the paste holds its shape with a spoon. Remember to stir! 

Spoon your tomato paste into jars, and leave about 1 inch at the top. Pour a little olive oil on top and seal the jars to store. You're done! There, that wasn't so bad, was it?

The Mystery Recipe is coming soon, so keep an eye out for it!