Five centuries ago, French peasants from the southern province of Provence began preparing a vegetable dish called ratatouille. Or maybe they prepared it before, but history is silent about this at this point in time. And how surprised they would be now if they learned that this popular summer dish is prepared by all the famous chefs in all the famous restaurants in the world. It would seem like a simple vegetable vegetarian dish, why has it become so popular? However, the same question can be asked in relation to such dishes as pizza, Caesar salad, Greek moussaka.
Somehow I accidentally came across an answer in one of the magazines, although by that time the question had not yet been asked, which I remember to this day. The idea sounded something like this: “the most popular dishes are those that absolutely anyone can cook, even those who have never cooked at all. And the name of such a dish should be memorable; you want to say it again and again. It's like a song that plays in your head. And it’s hard to get rid of this song, and you say this title again and again.”
The names of all these dishes are really very poetic. And just hearing them, you immediately feel that it’s delicious, and even if you’ve never tried it, you definitely want to cook it and try it. I remember my mother preparing this dish when I was a child. When I asked what she was cooking, she invariably answered, “It’s ratatouille!” Eat it and dance!” But it is true, its name invariably brings a smile and a good mood, so you can dance.
And apparently under the same impression, American director Brad Bird created his famous cartoon - a comedy of the same name, which received an Oscar. Where the little rat Remy also prepares a dish - ratatouille. Come on, with a smile and a good mood, we will also prepare this French dish today. And not even one, but several.
Ratatouille - a classic recipe in the oven
Product calculations are given for a round mold with a diameter of 23 cm, for 3-4 servings.
We will need:
- eggplant – 1-2 pieces (depending on size)
- zucchini – 1-2 pieces (depending on size)
- tomatoes – 4-5 pcs.
- bell pepper – 2 pcs
- onion – 1 pc.
- garlic – 2 cloves
- mixture of Provencal herbs – 1-1.5 teaspoons
- paprika – 1 teaspoon
- olive oil – 4 tbsp. spoons (you can use 5)
- salt, ground black pepper to taste
Preparation:
1. Wash the vegetables and let dry.
2. Cut the onion into cubes. Heat the oil in a frying pan and fry the onion in it.
There is no need to fry too much; the onions should simmer rather than fry.
3. While it is simmering, peel and cut the bell pepper into cubes. If you have red peppers, it will be just wonderful! Ratatouille will turn out bright and beautiful.
As soon as the onion becomes soft, add pepper to it. Fry everything together for 5 minutes.
4. Pour boiling water over one red tomato, remove the skin and finely chop. Add to the pan. Fry for 3 minutes.
5. Add water or vegetable broth. I always freeze the broth left over from boiling vegetables in the freezer. Right now it will come in handy for me. I add cubes, they will give a liquid volume of approximately 500 ml. Let it boil.
6. Meanwhile, crush the garlic with a knife and then chop it as finely as possible. Also prepare a mixture of Provençal herbs and paprika for color and taste. Tomatoes are no longer summer, and not so bright and juicy, so paprika will provide the missing sweetness and brightness.
7. Add garlic and spices to the vegetables, salt and pepper to taste. Simmer for 5 minutes until the spices infuse the sauce with flavor, turn off the heat and cover with a lid. Let the aroma of Provençal herbs reveal itself with all its strength.
8. Meanwhile, cut the eggplant, zucchini and tomatoes into slices.
It should be noted that it is best for all vegetables to have the same diameter when cutting. This will make it easier to place them in the mold.
My eggplants turned out to be somewhat larger than everything else, and so I had to tinker with laying them out. But what to do, winter is already upon us, and I had to buy eggplants as they were.
9. Prepare a form in which we will place the vegetables. The shape can be either round or square; both large and small - just for one serving.
I have a round mold with a diameter of 23 cm. I will put vegetables in it. But first we put a little sauce on the bottom, just to cover it.
10. You need to lay out one by one, alternating light and dark colors; try to follow the sequence of laying out the vegetables so that one always follows the other.
For variety of colors I use both red and yellow tomatoes. Let me boast, my yellow tomatoes are from the garden, they are still stored, and they are not even in the refrigerator.
And so a circle of red tomato, then zucchini, yellow tomato and eggplant - it turns out quite beautiful.
11. Arrange vegetables in a spiral. And when you're done, you need to add a little salt and pepper, and then put the rest of the sauce on top. This will prevent the vegetables from drying out and preventing them from overcooking.
12. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Place the pan with ratatouille in the oven and bake for 1 hour.
After 40 minutes, look into the oven, and if you see that the top has begun to brown too much, cover the dish with foil.
I didn't need it. The sauce turned out to be quite enough to make the dish beautiful and not “cooked”.
13. After the time is up, remove the dish from the oven, cover with a lid and let it stand and rest for 10-15 minutes.
14. Then place portions on plates, also in the form of a spiral, picking up the “spiral” with a wide spatula. You can decorate the top with greenery.
Ratatouille can be eaten either hot or cold. It is equally delicious in any form.
Recipe 3, step by step: ratatouille with minced meat and cheese
I have long wanted to cook ratatouille with vegetables, and to make it more filling, I added minced meat. Ratatouille can be served hot or cold. This is a great appetizer or light main dish. Try it very tasty!
- Eggplant - 3 pcs
- Tomato – 3 pcs
- Minced meat - 500 g
- Onion ((small) - 1 pc.
- Garlic - 2 teeth.
- Hard cheese - 100 g
- Butter - 50 g
- Salt (to taste)
- Ground black pepper (to taste)
We cut the eggplants into slices and fry them in a non-stick frying pan without oil, so they do not fry, they are baked.
Add chopped onion and garlic to the minced meat, salt and pepper to taste. Mix everything well. When the eggplants have cooled a little, apply minced meat to them.
Cut the tomatoes into circles.
Place eggplants with minced meat and tomato slices alternately in a circle in a greased pan.
Add chopped butter.
Sprinkle the dish with grated cheese and place in a preheated oven at 180 degrees. Bake until golden brown, about 35-40 minutes.
Eggplant ratatouille with tomatoes and minced meat is ready.
Ratatouille with cheese sauce baked in the oven
Before I start describing the recipe, I’ll note that I prepared this recipe at the end of the gardening season. And all my vegetables turned out to be of different sizes. It is impossible to make a beautiful vegetable spiral from such vegetables, and so I prepared it using a form that is not quite traditional for ratatouille. But, if you remember that this dish is nothing more than a vegetable stew baked in the oven, there are no violations here.
In addition, there is an opportunity to show this dish in another version. To prepare it, I use a glass oval mold measuring 28 x 23 cm.
We will need:
- eggplant – 1-2 pcs (450 g)
- zucchini – 1-2 pcs (450 g)
- red pepper – 1 pc.
- yellow and green peppers - 1 pc.
- tomatoes – 2-3 pcs (large)
- tomato juice – 1.5 cups
- olive oil – 4 tbsp. spoons
- salt, pepper to taste
- mixture of Provencal herbs – 1.5-2 teaspoons
- mint
- greens for decoration
For the sauce:
- hard cheese – 80 gr
- butter – 50 g
- flour – 1 tbsp. spoon
- milk – 220 ml
- salt, pepper to taste
Preparation:
1. Pour tomato juice into the mold. Add olive oil, salt and pepper to taste and mix everything right in the pan.
2. Eggplants are somewhat bitter, so I cut them into slices, salt them and leave them for 20 minutes so that the bitterness comes out. Then lightly squeeze the eggplants. Place them in the first layer in tomato juice. Place mint leaves on top. Or you can replace it with a sprig of rosemary or thyme.
3. Also cut the zucchini into slices.
And place on top of the eggplants.
4. Peel the bell pepper, removing the stem and seeds.
Cut into slices and place on top of the zucchini slices.
5. Also cut the tomatoes into slices. They are my own, from the garden - very large, fleshy and sweet. That's good, the sauce will be just right.
6. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Cover the pan with foil and press it firmly onto the pan. Place in the oven for 40 minutes.
7. Meanwhile, prepare milk-cheese sauce. It is prepared in almost the same way as Bechamel sauce. At the end of the description of this recipe, I will remind you how it is done.
8. After 40 minutes, take out the pan and remove the foil. Pour the sauce over the vegetables and put them back in the oven. This time for 10-15 minutes. The top should be covered with a beautiful golden brown crust.
9. Remove from the oven and let stand for 10-15 minutes. Sprinkle with remaining cheese and chopped herbs.
10. Serve directly in the form. Spread the ratatouille with a large, wide spatula, scooping out all the layers.
Eat with pleasure and enjoy the taste!
Making milk cheese sauce
1. Place butter in a frying pan and melt it.
2. Gradually add flour to the butter, stirring constantly. The oil should not be very hot, otherwise both it and the flour will start to burn. In this case, the sauce will turn out dark and will not have a tasty smell.
3. As soon as the flour is slightly fried and a slight nutty smell appears, pour in the milk in a thin stream, continuing to stir all the time so that lumps do not form, add a little salt and pepper.
4. Add cheese, leave a little for decoration. Continuing to stir, bring the mixture to a boil. As soon as it starts to thicken a little, remove from heat.
You can not add cheese to the sauce, but simply sprinkle it on a ready-made hot dish,
Recipe 1: ratatouille with cheese (step-by-step photos)
Ratatouille is one of those types of dishes that are not only pleasant to prepare, but also pleasant to eat. At first glance, the dish seems so attractive that your appetite instantly awakens. Bright circles of vegetables beckon us. Also, the ease of preparing ratatouille has always pleased me. And it takes so little time that all you have to do is wait for the vegetables to bake, but this is not such a long process.
In the summer, you just want to eat something tasty, light and vegetable, so cook ratatouille with cheese in the oven with me according to this detailed recipe with step-by-step photos, and you will also have an elegant and very tasty vegetable dish on your table. I also want to note that in terms of the number of calories, ratatouille takes pride of place, since it contains no fat, and consists only of low-calorie foods. A small handful of cheese has never harmed anyone, but even here you can choose a low-fat type of cheese that is allowed on your diet, or use homemade cheese.
- 200 grams of zucchini,
- 200 grams of eggplants,
- 200 grams of tomato,
- 2-3 cloves of garlic,
- 150 grams of bell pepper,
- 150 grams of hard cheese,
- salt and black pepper as desired,
- 70-100 grams of olive oil.
Rinse all the vegetables and place them immediately on a napkin so that it absorbs moisture. If the vegetables are fresh and young, then there is no need to peel them. Cut the zucchini into circles.
Also cut the eggplants into circles and immediately sprinkle them with salt so that the bitterness comes out of them.
Also cut the tomatoes into medium-thick slices. Cut the vegetables into approximately the same thickness so that they bake equally and in the same amount of time.
Remove seeds from bell peppers and then cut into rings.
Chop the garlic. I cut it into slices so that it imparted its flavor to the vegetables, but so that later I could put it aside.
Take a mold and place vegetables there in layers, or rather, as if at an angle, but each vegetable one after another. Salt the vegetables, pepper, pour olive oil. Place the vegetables in the oven to bake for 25-30 minutes.
Grate the cheese.
When the ratatouille is baked, remove from the oven and sprinkle with cheese. Put back in the oven until the cheese melts. This will take 2-3 minutes. Remove the ratatouille from the oven.
Serve a hot dish to the table. Decorate with your favorite greenery and serve to everyone.
Bon appetit!
How to cook ratatouille in sour cream sauce
We will need:
- eggplant – 1-2 pcs
- zucchini – 1-2 pcs.
- tomato – 4 pcs.
- bell pepper – 1-2 pcs
- onion – 1 pc.
- Provençal herbs – 1.5 teaspoons
- paprika – 1 teaspoon
- olive oil – 4 tbsp. spoons
- butter – 1 tbsp. spoon
- salt, ground black pepper to taste
For the sauce:
- egg – 3 pcs
- sour cream – 200 gr
- salt, ground black pepper to taste
Preparation:
1. Cut the onion and bell pepper, seeded and stalked, into cubes. Remove the skin from one tomato, scald it with boiling water, and also cut into cubes.
2. Fry the onion, add bell pepper and fry for another 2 minutes. Then add chopped tomato. Simmer everything together for 2-3 minutes. Add 0.5 liters of water or vegetable broth. And also spices, salt and pepper.
3. Cut eggplant, zucchini and three tomatoes into slices.
4. Grease the pan with butter and arrange the vegetables either in a spiral shape or in layers.
5. Cover with foil and place in an oven preheated to 200 degrees.
6. Prepare the sauce. To do this, mix sour cream, eggs, salt and pepper using a fork.
7. Take out the pan, remove the foil and pour the sauce over the vegetables.
8. Bake for another 10-15 minutes, until the ratatouille is golden brown.
9. Take out the mold and let stand for 10-15 minutes. Serve directly in the form. And then arrange on plates.
This dish is very tasty both hot and cold. And I like it even better when it cools down.
Recipe 2: ratatouille baked with cheese (step by step)
Dishes made from garden vegetables are so summery! Ratatouille is, one might say, a version of everyone's favorite vegetable stew. If desired, you can add potatoes, minced meat or other additives to ratatouille. I made ratatouille with a cheese crust and it turned out delicious!
- Eggplant 1 pc.
- Zucchini 1 pc.
- Tomato 2 pcs.
- Bell pepper 0.5 pcs.
- Garlic 1 pc.
- Rosemary 1 tsp.
- Salt 0.5 tsp.
- Black pepper 0.2 tsp.
- Basil 1 tsp.
- Olive oil 1 tbsp.
- Hard cheese 4 tbsp.
Remove the peel from one large tomato, twist the pulp in a blender, and pour the resulting tomato puree into a bowl.
Add salt, pepper, chopped garlic, dried basil and rosemary. Mix everything.
Pour the tomato sauce into a baking dish and add olive oil.
Cut the eggplants into slices and soak them in salted water so that the dish does not become bitter.
Cut the zucchini into slices.
We also chop the tomato and bell pepper.
Place the vegetables in a baking dish filled with sauce.
Cover the dish with foil and bake in the oven for about 25 minutes.
After this, open the foil and sprinkle the dish with grated cheese. And bake the ratatouille for another 5 minutes.
Recipe for classic ratatouille in a frying pan
As I said above, ratatouille can also be prepared in pieces, like a sauté. This is done much faster, especially since in this recipe we do not bake the vegetables in the oven, but stew them in a frying pan.
We will need:
The recipe contains a fairly large number of ingredients, so you can proportionally reduce them at your discretion.
- eggplant – 3 pcs.
- zucchini – 6 pcs.
- onions – 3 pcs.
- bell pepper – 3 pcs
- tomato sauce – 400 gr
- garlic – 3 teeth
- olive oil – 4 tbsp. spoons
- basil – 50 gr
- salt, pepper to taste
Preparation:
1. Cut the onion into cubes. Chop the garlic. And fry in a frying pan with high sides in oil.
2. Cut all vegetables into medium-sized pieces and add to the pan. Simmer slightly over low heat with the lid closed, stirring occasionally.
3. Add tomato juice. Stir, salt and pepper to taste.
4. Simmer until the vegetables are ready, about 30-40 minutes.
According to this recipe, ratatouille is prepared very quickly and turns out delicious. It can be eaten as an independent dish, or served as a side dish for meat.
Recipe 5: ratutouille with chicken and cheese (with photo)
Ratatouille with meat is the same ratatouille made from vegetables, to which a little juicy and tender chicken fillet has been added. This recipe is combined and is rather a free version of the original recipe. Instead of chicken, you can try making ratatouille with other meat, such as pork or beef. You can also safely experiment with spices when preparing such a tasty and satisfying dish as ratatouille with meat at home.
Eggplants are an integral attribute of any ratatouille and tomatoes, by the way, too. In addition to these vegetables, you can also add zucchini, bell peppers and even mushrooms to your ratatouille. The more ingredients, the more satisfying and varied the ratatouille with meat will be.
To make it easier for you to cook ratatouille with chicken at home, we have prepared a very detailed and clear step-by-step recipe with photos. He will describe each stage of cooking in detail and very accurately, so you can easily cope with them yourself. Spices for this ratatouille can be selected in relation to vegetables and meat at the same time. Baked in the oven, ratatouille will turn out incredibly tender, aromatic and appetizing.
So, without wasting any more time, let's get started making ratatouille with meat for dinner!
- chicken fillet – 500 gr
- hard cheese - 100 gr
- plum oil - 50 g
- eggplant - 2 pcs
- tomato - 3 pcs.
- garlic - 2 cloves
- onion - 1 piece
- ground black pepper - to taste
- spices and seasonings - to taste
- salt - to taste
First of all, thoroughly wash the chicken fillet, then dry it and pass it through a meat grinder. Peel the onion, chop it very finely or grind it in a blender. We do the same with garlic cloves. In a deep bowl, thoroughly mix the meat along with chopped onion and garlic. Wash the eggplants, then cut them into not too thin slices and, if necessary, add salt for 5-10 minutes: this will rid the vegetables of their inherent bitterness. Dry the eggplant plates, fry each in a dry frying pan on both sides for literally 1-2 minutes. Apply the prepared minced meat to the fried eggplant plates as shown in the photo.
Select a suitable fireproof baking dish. Wash the tomatoes and cut into slices to match the eggplants. Now gradually lay out the tomatoes and eggplants with minced chicken in a circle, alternating the vegetables with each other. Cut the specified amount of butter into small cubes and place on top of the vegetables in the pan.
Grate the hard cheese on the coarsest grater and sprinkle it over the vegetables in the baking dish. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and place the prepared vegetables with cheese and chicken into it. Bake the dish until done for 35 minutes.
Cut the finished dish into portions and serve with a side dish or as a separate dish. Ratatouille with meat, baked in the oven, ready.
Vegetable ratatouille - step-by-step recipe
I found this recipe on the Internet, where it was written that it belongs to chef Annette Tech from a restaurant in Languedoc. To my deepest regret, I didn’t find any information about it, but I liked the recipe. Therefore, I share it with great pleasure.
We will need (for 6 servings):
- eggplant – 2 pcs.
- zucchini – 6 pcs.
- bell peppers of three colors – 3 pcs (one at a time)
- tomatoes – 1 kg
- onions – 2 pcs.
- garlic – 3 cloves
- olive oil for frying
- fresh thyme – 4 sprigs
- bay leaf – 3 pcs.
- raspberry vinegar - 1 tbsp. spoon (I used regular 9%)
- parsley – 4-5 sprigs
- juice of half a lemon
- sugar – 0.5 tsp
Preparation:
1. Peel the onion and cut into cubes.
2. Make a cross-shaped cut on the tomatoes and scald them with boiling water. Then drain the water and remove the skins from the tomatoes. Then cut them into cubes.
3. Grease a baking sheet with olive oil and place the washed and dried peppers on it. Bake for 10 minutes at 175 degrees. Then put them in a plastic bag, tie them and leave for 20 minutes.
When the peppers have cooled, remove the stem, seeds and cut into cubes.
4. Cut the eggplants and zucchini into cubes. Sauté each vegetable in a frying pan separately, adding a little olive oil. And also add salt and pepper separately to taste.
While frying, pour lemon juice over the eggplants.
Add sugar to tomatoes. Put them out last.
5. Heat olive oil in a saucepan, just a little. The fire should be small. Add fried onions, zucchini and eggplants, add bell peppers and mix gently.
6. Increase heat and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring continuously. Then add chopped garlic, and after 3-4 minutes add salt if necessary.
7. Season the ratatouille with stewed tomatoes. Add finely chopped parsley, thyme and bay leaf.
8. Pour in vinegar. Stir and leave to simmer, covered with a lid, for 30-40 minutes.
The finished dish can be served both hot and cold. And also as a separate dish or as a side dish.
I think that now everyone will be able to cook the ratatouille they want. All the recipes are quite easy to prepare and anyone can make them. And I think even those who have never cooked anything at all.
And in conclusion, I want to say a few more words about this wonderful Provençal dish, so to speak - to sum it up.
Recipe 4: vegetable ratatouille with cheese and sauce
Ratatouille is a French classic. The classic recipe for ratatouille with step-by-step photos in the oven is often found on the Internet, but in fact the French keep it a secret. This is a dish dear to them, nourishing, high-calorie, real Provence. Juicy vegetables in thick tomato sauce have a bright taste, incredible health benefits for anyone, and besides, this dish looks very attractive on your table!
So, from our article you will learn how to make ratatouille. A recipe with photos, as well as many other ratatouille recipes, several secrets of preparing this seemingly simple, but so rich in taste and healthy dish, can be found in our article.
Ingredients for the dish:
- eggplants - 1 pc.
- young zucchini - 1 pc.
- tomatoes - 3 pcs.
- hot red pepper – ¼ pc.
- parsley - 2 sprigs
- garlic - 1 clove
- olive oil - 2 tbsp.
- Parmesan cheese – 30 g
- salt - to taste
- freshly ground black pepper - to taste
Ingredients for tomato sauce:
- tomatoes – 2 pcs.
- onion – ½ pc.
- bell pepper – ½ pc.
- olive oil - 1 tbsp.
- sugar, salt, black pepper - to taste
Prepare all ingredients. It is better to take vegetables of the same size in diameter, then according to this recipe the ratatouille dish will look beautiful and all the main ingredients will be cooked evenly.
Wash the eggplants and cut crosswise into thin circles 2-3 mm thick. Sprinkle with coarse salt and leave for 20-30 minutes to remove the bitterness that is sometimes felt in eggplants and spoils the recipe for the finished dish.
Wash the zucchini (or zucchini), dry it, if the crust is hard, cut it off and cut the zucchini into the same circles as the eggplants. Wash the tomatoes too and cut into circles or semi-circles (depending on the size of the tomatoes) with a diameter similar to other vegetables.
Prepare tomato sauce for ratatouille. The recipe with photos will show you step by step how to make hot sauce based on fresh tomatoes, but you can use canned tomatoes in their own juice or even tomato paste diluted with water instead.
Peel the onions and finely chop them into cubes. Wash the bell pepper, remove the seeds and cut into small cubes.
Wash the tomatoes, make a cross-shaped cut on the side of the stalk, put in boiling water for 2 minutes, remove the peeled skin and chop. You can cut them into cubes or blend them into a paste in a blender. For this ratatouille recipe with photo, I preferred to finely chop the tomatoes before frying using an ordinary grater, grating the pulp on it.
Pour oil into a preheated shallow saucepan, thick-bottomed saucepan or frying pan, add onion, add a little salt and fry until soft. Add bell peppers and fry with onions, stirring, for about 5 minutes.
Add chopped tomato pulp, salt, sugar and pepper to taste, stir and simmer over low heat, stirring, for 10-15 minutes. At the end, you can add chopped basil or parsley to the sauce.
The liquid (tomato juice) will reduce slightly and the sauce will become thicker.
Place two-thirds of the resulting tomato sauce on the bottom of a baking dish (ceramic or Teflon) (we will need the remaining ratatouille sauce for this recipe when serving).
Rinse the eggplants of salt and pat dry with a paper towel. Place the vegetables, alternating: tomato circle, eggplant circle, zucchini circle, until the entire form is filled. You can do this vertically, or you can place the vegetables in the pan horizontally, overlapping (in this case they will cook faster). If you are preparing ratatouille for the winter using this recipe, you can place vegetables in jars in the same way.
Wash the hot pepper and chop it very finely (if you have problems with the gastrointestinal tract, you don’t need to add hot pepper to the dish). Wash the parsley, dry and chop. Peel the garlic and chop finely. Combine the ingredients and mix, spread it evenly on the vegetables. Drizzle with olive oil and salt.
Cover the pan with parchment paper and bake the ratatouille according to the recipe with the photo in the oven for 40-50 minutes at 190-200 degrees.
Remove the ratatouille from the oven, sprinkle with cheese and let sit for 10 minutes.
Ratatouille according to the classic recipe with photo in the oven with cheese and tomatoes, place on a plate and serve with the remaining tomato sauce and focaccia or other aromatic bread.
How to cook ratatouille with meat
I don’t know if such dishes can be called ratatouille, because in traditional French recipes there is no meat in the dish. But still, I will take the liberty of calling them this way, as an exception!
How to cook? All ingredients and the entire cooking process can be left as in the first option. And meat products can be used as follows:
- using chicken fillet. Cut the fillet into thin slices, similar in size to vegetable slices, and place them in an additional layer in a spiral.
- using minced meat. Fry the minced meat along with onions, peppers and tomatoes. Place all the sauce on the bottom of the mold. Then arrange the vegetables in a spiral. There is no need to fill it with anything, but bake it covered with foil. Otherwise the vegetables will be dry.
- using minced meat - option 2. Prepare minced meat, stir in the white of one egg, add salt and pepper. Mix the minced meat well and beat it. Then form small thin cutlets and place them in a vegetable “spiral” in a separate layer. Pour the sauce over the top, in which case the foil may not be necessary.
- using bacon. Place the bacon in a vegetable “spiral”, folding the piece in half.
- using lard. In Languedoc, pieces of smoked lard (lardon) are added to ratatouille for satiety. I've never tried it, but it must be delicious! And the smell of smoked meat is probably not too bad either!
Ratatouille in Italian style
There are many ways to prepare this Provençal masterpiece. The main ingredients are the same: zucchini, bell pepper, eggplant, tomatoes, onions. To make the taste more refined, the chefs came up with a version with mozzarella cheese.
- Prepare tomato sauce: Cut tomatoes, peppers, and onions into small cubes. Pour olive oil into the pan. Simmer for 15 minutes over medium heat. At the end, add black pepper, sugar, salt, and herbs.
- Cut cheese and vegetables into slices.
- Spread the sauce on the bottom of the pan.
- Place tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant, and mozzarella vertically. You can put a ball of cheese in the middle and sprinkle with herbs.
- Cover with a lid and place in the oven for 1 hour. Bake at 190 degrees.
The result is a gorgeous vegetable “pie” that everyone will be delighted with. Look at the photo and see how beautiful this dish turns out.
Tips and tricks.
To conclude all of the above, I would like to add a few words about those things without which it is impossible to prepare a delicious ratatouille.
If one of your household members does not accept vegetable dishes with meat, and someone cannot eat vegetables without meat ingredients, then you can, for example, cook chicken separately, or make a beef steak.
Essentially, ratatouille is a vegetable stew. If you don’t have time for a beautiful classic layout of ingredients, then you can cut the vegetables into cubes, mix them in random order and bake like that.
Of course, classic ratatouille is unthinkable without the addition of Provençal herbs. The quantity directly depends on your taste, but do not forget the golden rule that everything should be in moderation. Therefore, it is not recommended to use too many spices so as not to interrupt the taste of the vegetables.
Ratatouille with beef in a frying pan
A very simple and quick ratatouille recipe. There is no need to arrange vegetables like an accordion!
You will need:
650 g of lean ground beef, 2 small eggplants, 2 onions, 1 zucchini, 2 multi-colored sweet bell peppers, 2 large tomatoes, 1.5 tbsp.
l. tomato sauce, fresh herbs, Provençal herbs and sea salt. Preparation:
First, fry the hands in vegetable oil, then add the minced meat. Fry until done. Separately, fry the eggplant cubes, add zucchini and pepper, also diced. When the vegetables are slightly fried, add tomato paste and chopped tomatoes. Simmer for about 20 minutes. Then add fried minced meat with onions, add chopped herbs and garlic. Stir, wait 7 minutes and turn off the stove. Cover the pan with a lid and leave the ratatouille to steep for at least 15 minutes.
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Meat ratatouille
Lots of different vegetables and fried pieces of meat, what could be better and tastier?
You will need:
500 g frozen beef, 2 sweet bell peppers, 1 medium eggplant, 1 young zucchini, 4 fleshy tomatoes, 1 onion, 3 cloves of garlic, Provençal herbs, sea salt and ground pepper mixture, vegetable oil.
Preparation:
Cut bell peppers, zucchini and eggplant into small cubes (1 x 1 cm), onions and tomatoes into thin half rings. Thaw the beef slightly, but not completely, so that it is easier to cut into cubes, like other vegetables.
Heat the oil in a frying pan, add the meat and fry until golden brown on all sides. Fry the onion separately, then add zucchini, eggplant and chopped garlic. Cook over low heat, covered, for 15 minutes. Then add the tomatoes, stir and continue to simmer under the lid for the same amount of time. Add the beef cubes to the vegetables, season with salt and spices, cook everything together for 10 - 12 minutes.
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French-style vegetable casserole in milk sauce
The main highlight of this dish is that it is prepared not only with cheese, but also with egg.
- Cut all the vegetables into rings (3 potatoes, 1 zucchini, 1 eggplant, 3 tomatoes).
- Place them in a round shape one by one. Don't forget to grease the bottom with olive oil, add pepper and salt.
- Make the sauce: combine grated cheese with two beaten eggs and milk (2 cups). For a more pronounced taste, season the mixture with nutmeg (on the tip of a knife).
- Pour the prepared sauce over the vegetables. Place in the oven at 200 degrees for 30-40 minutes.
The divine dish in the most delicate sauce is ready. Let us remind you that you can cook any of the recipes listed in a multicooker using the “Baking” mode. Bon appetit!
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