Organic Recipe Friday: Ratatouille

When Life Hands You an Eggplant

We all know the adage “When life hands you a lemon, make lemonade.” Well, when life—or a local farm—hands me an eggplant, I make ratatouille. A recent delivery from my CSA and a trip to a farm in Maryland just happened to yield pretty much everything I needed for this delicious dish, which can be eaten hot or cold. The only question was if I should roast the vegetables or sauté them.

Roasted eggplant melts in your mouth, roasted onion is fantastically sweet, roasted garlic is just plain delicious. But moving around a hot kitchen on a summer evening (I’m hoping to have an air-conditioning-free year)? Could I stand the heat? Sure I could! So I prepared a big glass of ice water, tuned into my favorite digital radio station and fired up the oven. (If you’re not up for roasting your veggies, you can cook everything on the stove.)

Ratatouille

Serves 5

• Two slender eggplants, sliced lengthwise
• 2 medium zucchini, or a zucchini and a yellow summer squash, chopped into large chunks
• 1 large onion, cut into eights, lengthwise
• 1 large bell pepper, chopped into large chunks
• 1 tablespoon fennel seeds
• Three garlic cloves
• Two shallots
• Three medium or large tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 teaspoon rosemary
• 1/4 cup fresh basil, chop leaves roughly or not at all
• Black pepper

Preheat oven to 425. Cover cookie sheet with aluminum foil and coat lightly with nonstick spray. Put eggplants cut side down and bake for a few minutes. Wrap whole unpeeled garlic and peeled shallots in foil. Remove eggplant and spread squash, onion and pepper into a single layer, and put garlic and shallots on the side. Sprinkle fennel seeds and return to oven. Bake until vegetables are soft, about 15 minutes. Remove from oven. When you can handle eggplant, remove skin and chop eggplant. Remove garlic and shallots from foil. They should be very soft. Slice the stem end off the garlic and squeeze out of peel. Chop garlic and shallots.

Heat olive oil in a medium-size pot and add tomatoes. Cook for a couple of minutes and add roasted vegetables and rosemary. Cook for a few minutes and stir in basil and pepper. Serve ratatouille on its own or over pasta.

Photo Credit: Flickr User (and author) bornOKthefirsttime