At the mention of the word "ratatouille", many recall the animated film of the same name about the rat Remy, who knows the recipe for making a delicious vegetable stew. It was this mixture of zucchini, tomatoes and eggplant that won the heart of a strict cartoonish culinary critic. So what is the famous ratatouille actually and how to cook it? This will be discussed in this article. Here you can see ratatouille recipes with photos.
Classic recipe
Ratatouille - what is this unusual dish? I must say, there is nothing surprising in it. This dish is somewhat reminiscent of the Hungarian lecho, only with the addition of Provencal herbs. It is these French spices that give the Ratha a divine taste. Without them, the dish loses all meaning and turns into an ordinary vegetable stew.
Let’s try to cook a traditional French ratatouille (classic recipe). It was this dish that the Provencal women fed their husbands and children. The recipe has been known for a long time, which means it has been tested by time.
Cooking a traditional dish
Take the eggplant and cut it into thin circles. Salt and leave for a while so that bitterness comes out. Meanwhile, chop two zucchini and tomatoes (5 pcs.) As well. A total of 6 tomatoes will be needed, but one must be left for the sauce. In the meantime, the eggplant is waiting in the wings, you can do dressing for the dish. Let's start cooking the sauce. Finely chop the onion head and the remaining tomato into cubes, removing the skin from it. Heat the pan with vegetable oil. Put onion and passer on it. Add two sweet peppers, green and red, tomato and a clove of garlic. Season to taste with salt and pepper, simmer for about five minutes. Add here five tablespoons of tomato paste, hold a little more on the fire.
Pour the sauce into the prepared refractory dishes. From above, start spreading circles of vegetables, alternating them among themselves, in the form of scales. Season the dish with provence herbs, salt and pepper. Add some vegetable or olive oil. Cover the dishes with foil and put in the oven preheated to 180 degrees for half an hour. Let the dish cook for ten minutes and serve. This ratatouille, cooked in the oven, can be eaten without fear of getting better, since there is practically no oil in it.
Soup
Ratatouille soup is very popular in Russia. In fact, this is a vegetable stew in which broth or water is added.
For cooking you will need:
- 2.5 liters of broth or water;
- 3 zucchini;
- 800 grams of tomatoes in their own juice ;
- bulb;
- Bell pepper;
- eggplant;
- 50-60 grams of pasta;
- 0.5 teaspoon thyme;
- a bit of oregano;
- cheese;
- salt, spices.
Dice the eggplant, salt and leave for 20 minutes. Finely chop the onion and fry it in vegetable oil until transparent. Then put the diced zucchini and garlic squeezed through the press. Rinse the eggplant in cold running water and add it to the vegetables. Fry for five minutes. Heat water or broth on an adjacent burner, put tomatoes, salt, spices, spices. Bring to a boil and cook under the lid for ten minutes, then pour the pasta and cook until they are ready. Put the stewed vegetables in a pan and serve the ratatouille soup, sprinkled with grated cheese.
Recipe for the Lazy
It is not necessary to use a certain set of vegetables and spices for cooking stew, you can experiment with the classic recipe and get a delicious dish in the end. If you don’t have zucchini and bell peppers on hand, know that even without them it will work out very well. Make a lazy ratatouille. What is he like? In essence, these are baked vegetables in the oven. We start to cook. We cut the eggplant with an accordion and soak. This must be done in advance, two hours before preparation. Shred a couple of tomatoes in circles. If your eggplant is small, then cut the tomatoes into half rings.
Make aromatic pasta from feta cheese. Take six tablespoons of this cheese, add a couple of tablespoons of olive or vegetable oil, a little mayonnaise (sour cream), squeeze the garlic through a press. Mix everything thoroughly. And sprinkle with basil, dry or fresh. Grease a baking sheet with butter and lay out the eggplant, start stuffing it. Insert a tomato and feta cheese paste into each cut. And so on until the very end. Only pre-grease the incisions with olive oil, and after that lay the filling. So it will be much tastier.
Proceed further at will. You can lubricate, for example, eggplant with mayonnaise or sour cream with garlic and cheese. Bake for about an hour at a temperature of 180 degrees. Serve as a hot dish or cold appetizer. It goes well with meat and rice. And just with fresh bread! So we modified the ratatouille (classic recipe) and prepared a completely new dish.
Unusual recipe with meat: ingredients
If you can’t imagine your life without a piece of delicious meat, try making a veal ratatouille.
To do this, take:
- Veal - 200 grams.
- Parmesan - 150 g.
- Three onions.
- Tomatoes - 6 pieces.
- Two carrots.
- 2 potatoes.
- Red bell pepper - 5 pieces.
- Half a zucchini.
- Eggplant.
- 150 grams of boiled water.
- Unsharp ketchup - 3 tablespoons
- Salt.
- Pepper.
- Provencal herbs (mixture).
- Some olive oil and sour cream.
Meat Ratatouille: Cooking
Prepare vegetables, peel them. Chop the onions finely, grate the carrots, pepper and tomatoes (2 pieces each) finely chopped. Heat a pan with olive oil. Fry the onion until transparent, add the carrots, cook for about five minutes. Add to them the same tomatoes and peppers, stew a little. Pour in ketchup, salt and remove from stove. Grind this passer with a blender. Dilute the resulting puree with water.
Cut the veal in portions, pepper and fry on both sides until a golden crust appears.
In a heat-resistant dish put the meat together with the juice formed during frying. Pour it with vegetable caviar.
Cut vegetables into slices. You can add mushrooms. Put everything very tightly on top of the meat with mashed potatoes. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and Provencal herbs. Cover the dishes with foil and put in a heated oven. Bake for about an hour at a temperature of 230 degrees. After that, remove the foil, sprinkle with cheese and bake for another five minutes. Delicious ratatouille is ready! Serve the dish with sour cream.
Variations on the theme ...
The Russians are resourceful and extraordinary people. We constantly invent and invent something. Even the classic French recipe was modified to suit the taste preferences of the Russian people. Did you eat, for example, potato ratatouille? What is this dish and how to cook it?
To implement the idea, we need very simple products that can be purchased at any store: potatoes, tomatoes, hard cheese. There is only one exotic ingredient in this recipe from France. This is blue mold cheese. But it takes quite a bit, only 50 grams.
Let's try to cook this dish. Peel 5 potatoes, cut into slices. Shred two tomatoes in the same way. Lubricate the mold with butter and put the vegetables in it in a circle, alternating between them. Season with pepper and salt, sprinkle with olive or vegetable oil. Sprinkle vegetables with grated regular cheese (50 g), and lay on top a noble blue. Put in the oven and bake at 180 degrees until tender. Now you can cook ratatouille yourself. “What is it to come up with delicious vegetables?” - This question is no longer relevant.
Instead of an afterword
So you are convinced that preparing ratatouille is not difficult at all. And the ingredients for it are available to everyone. You can even roll vegetable ratatouille in jars and enjoy its magnificent taste and bright colors throughout the winter. Pamper your loved ones and friends with a tasty dish more often. It should be noted that vegetables are extremely useful in vitamins and minerals, so they must be included in the daily children's diet. You can use ratatouille not only hot, but also cold, so cook it on weekdays and for the holiday. Look at the ratatouille recipes with photos, invent your own ways of serving and enjoy this simple but useful dish!