Friday, January 30, 2009

Ratatouille...well done Michael!

On Wednesday night Michael made Ratatouille. We love the movie, and so Michael decided he wanted to try the dish. I admit I was hesitant to try it, it had vegetables I had never had. But I was pleasantly surprised by how good it smelled while cooking it, and that it was pretty good. We ate it by itself, and warmed up some rolls. The next day since there was leftovers I cooked some rice, and served the leftovers over rice, and that was really good too. You may be wondering what is on Ratatouille. Michael found a few different recipes and took from several of them, so this is what we ended up putting in it: Roma tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant (that is the vegetable I had never had) yellow bell peppers, red bell peppers, onions, yellow squash, garlic, a bit is salt and pepper, and a little bit of balsamic vinaigrette. We chopped it in chunks instead of slices and then cooked it in the electric skillet. We will be making it again but with a few differences, less peppers, more zucchini, tomatoes and onions, and no eggplant (it was the seeds in the eggplant that weirded me out, it was good, but I could do without).

* had a request for the recipe, so here it goes. This is what we did:

We cut into chunks (maybe a little larger than a die)
2-Roma tomatoes
1-Zucchini
1/2-Eggplant (pealed and then chunked)
1-yellow bell pepper
1- red bell pepper
1 whole med sized onion (we did yellow onion)
1- yellow squash

-We put about 2 tsp garlic (we used minced from a gar) and a few tablespoons olive oil and onion in the electric skillet and saute for 3-4 minutes.
- then we added the zucchini and squash and saute for another 3-4 minutes.
- then we added the eggplant, saute for 3-4 minutes.
-then add the red and yellow peppers, saute another 3-4 minutes.
-then add the tomatoes and saute another 3-4 minutes.
-then we added the balsamic vinaigrette (we used Kraft Light Balsamic Vinaigrette), covered, and simmered 10-15 minutes. We might have simmered less, so the vegetables weren't super mushy.

Michael did the cooking part, I helped with the cutting, so I hope that I interpreted his notes right. But this does seem like a recipe that you can cater to your tastes, more or less of things etc...

3 comments:

Amber said...

Sounds yummy! I love eggplant and all the other veggies you mentioned. Can you post the recipe?

jeannie said...

I've edited the post and added what we did to make it!

Rosalie Erekson Stone said...

I love ratatouille! Since I went to France on my mission, I got to eat it quite often.
When I looked at the photo I was really puzzled, because I have never seen it made with chuncks rather than thin slices. You might want to try slices sometime to see which you like better. It may seem strange, but just like different shapes of pasta make a dish taste slightly different, the shape of the vegetable pieces can change the dish, too.
I didn't think I liked eggplant until I had it breaded and fried, and then in ratatouille!