It is difficult to find a person who would be completely indifferent to French dishes. However, most of these dishes to cook at home, few people risk, fearing that not enough for this culinary skills. In addition, there is no certainty that it will be possible to purchase all the necessary ingredients, and everyone will like the result. However, there is a dish in French cuisine, which consists of available products, does not have too exotic taste and is cooked simply. This dish is ratatouille, well known to many of us thanks to the cartoon with the same name. If all the housewives knew how to cook ratatouille, they would have done it no less often than potatoes or vegetable stews. In fact, ratatouille is also a vegetable stew, just cooked according to a special recipe.
Cooking Features
If you want ratatouille not to turn into ordinary vegetable stew, it was tasty and appetizing, when preparing it you need to take several things into account:
- Only fresh vegetables are used to make ratatouille, frozen vegetables and, especially, canned food are not suitable for this. Initially, only zucchini, tomatoes, sweet peppers and onions were included in the recipe, later garlic was added to them, and then eggplants. Ratatouille, consisting of the listed products, is considered classic. However, today you can find variations of the recipe, when it includes other vegetables, rice, minced meat, meat, cheese and other products.
- The classical technology involves cooking ratatouille by baking vegetables, but today you can find recipes for cooking this dish in a pan. In this case, the vegetables are stewed.
- Ratatouille is easy to prepare, but this recipe is not for the lazy. After all, the ideal dish is all the vegetables for which are peeled, and this process is painstaking.
- To make a ready-made dish look appetizing, all vegetables for it should be cut into pieces of approximately the same shape and size. Most often they are cut into circles and laid out in a form, alternating. You can lay out overlapping or putting mugs on the edge - in the latter case more vegetables are placed in the form. It is considered acceptable to cut vegetables into cubes. In this case, they should be large enough so that the dish does not turn into a shapeless mass.
- It is better to choose tomatoes that are not overripe, since soft ones will be difficult to cut evenly.
- Squashes and eggplants should be chosen young. Without large seeds, as their extraction by prescription is not provided.
- For cooking, you must use the complex seasoning “Provencal herbs”, which helps to give the dish a French flavor. In its absence, you can use a mixture of dried rosemary, basil, thyme, fennel, cumin and mint in any proportion.
It is undesirable to cook ratatouille in advance, because due to the acid contained in tomatoes, the vegetables may turn pale, as a result, the dish will not be so beautiful, and its taste will not change for the better.
How to make ratatouille according to the classic recipe
Composition:
- tomatoes - 0, 6 kg;
- zucchini - 0, 2-0, 25 kg;
- eggplant (optional) - 0, 2-0, 25 kg;
- sweet pepper - 0, 2 kg;
- onions - 100 g;
- garlic - 4-5 cloves;
- Provencal herbs - to taste;
- salt, pepper - to taste;
- olive oil - how much will leave.
Preparation Method:
- Boil water and pour tomatoes on it. After a couple of minutes, remove them and peel them.
- Cut the third part of tomatoes into small cubes.
- Wash the peppers, remove the seeds from the middle. Cut the pepper into small squares.
- Peel and finely chop the onion.
- Heat olive oil in a pan. Place the tomatoes, peppers, and onions in the pan. First, fry them for 5 minutes over medium heat, then reduce the heat and then boil the vegetable mixture under the lid for 10-15 minutes, depending on the juiciness of the vegetables. The result should be a thin sauce. Add salt and ground black pepper to taste.
- Pour the sauce to the bottom of the mold in which you plan to bake the vegetables. In the classic version, it has a round shape and a relatively small diameter (from 23 to 28 cm).
- Peel the zucchini and eggplant with a peeler.
- Sprinkle eggplant with salt, wait 20 minutes, then wash off the salt, and dry the vegetable with a paper napkin.
- Cut the zucchini and eggplant into circles with a thickness of about 0, 7-0, 8 cm. Cut the remaining tomatoes in the same circle.
- Put the vegetables in shape with the sauce, alternating between them: eggplant, zucchini, tomato, then eggplant again, and so on, until the vegetables run out.
- Pass the garlic cloves through a press, add a mixture of herbs to them, dilute it all with olive oil, adding a couple of tablespoons of this product.
- Water the vegetables with this sauce.
- Heat the oven to 180 degrees, put the form in it.
- Bake vegetables for an hour - according to the classic recipe, they should be completely soft.
The dish looks so beautiful that you can put it on the table right in the form, spreading it out after all have sat down at the table. Another option is to cook ratatouille in several small forms at once and place it in front of each portion. In this case, care should be taken to ensure that the forms are not too hot.
Recipe ratatouy from the cartoon
Composition:
- zucchini - 140 g;
- zucchini - 140 g;
- eggplant - 140 g;
- tomatoes - 0, 7 kg;
- Bulgarian pepper (different color) - 0, 3 kg;
- onions - 100 g;
- olive oil - 70 ml;
- garlic - 3 cloves;
- balsamic vinegar - 20 ml;
- thyme milled - a pinch;
- fresh thyme - 1 sprig;
- fresh parsley - 1 sprig;
- Provencal herbs - 10-20 g;
- bay leaf - 1 pc .;
- ground black pepper, salt to taste.
Preparation Method:
- Wash the sweet pepper, cut it along, take out the seeds. Lay a foil on a baking sheet, lay the halves of peppers on it in slices down. Foil before this need to grease a small amount of oil. Preheat oven to 220-240 degrees and place a baking sheet with peppers in it for 15 minutes.
- Peel the onion, cut it into small pieces.
- Finely chop the garlic cloves with a knife.
- Scald tomatoes with boiling water, peel them off. Approximately 0, 3 kg of tomatoes cut into small cubes.
- Pour two tablespoons of oil into the pan. When it is heated, add onions and garlic. Cook them over medium heat until they change shade.
- Add tomatoes, reduce heat. Top with bay leaves, thyme and parsley. Sprinkle with ground thyme. Cover the pan with the lid and simmer the tomatoes for 10-15 minutes.
- Remove the baked pepper from the oven, cool it and peel it, cut it into small pieces and add the sauce. Stew the sauce for another 5 minutes. Take out the bay leaves, parsley and thyme.
- Beat the vegetable mass with a blender. Set aside a tablespoon of sauce, pour the rest to the bottom of the baking dish.
- Zucchini, zucchini, eggplant, clean the skin. Cut them and tomatoes in circles about half a centimeter thick. Put in the form, alternating.
- Chop the remaining garlic clove with a knife, mix with the deferred sauce, the remaining vegetable oil, and salt. Pepper and spicy herbs. Add balsamic vinegar and mix.
- Pour the vegetables over the sauce, cover the form with foil.
- Set the shape of the oven. Bake the ratatouille at a temperature of 140-160 degrees for an hour and a half, then remove the foil and continue to bake for another half hour. If the vegetables on top begin to burn, put the foil back in place.
If you cook ratatouille for this recipe, it can even be attributed to the haute cuisine.
How to cook ratatouille in a pan
Composition:
- tomatoes - 0, 3 kg;
- onions - 0, 2 kg;
- leek - 1 stalk;
- sweet red pepper - 0, 4 kg;
- zucchini - 0, 4 kg;
- eggplant - 0, 2 kg;
- fresh parsley - 50 g;
- hot pepper - 1 pod;
- vegetable oil - how much will leave;
- salt, seasonings - to taste.
Preparation Method:
- Wash and dry the vegetables.
- Cut the leek into circles, the rest of the vegetables into cubes about 1-1.5 cm in size. It makes sense to cut the onion into smaller pieces. Tomatoes must first remove the skin. Make it will be easy if you scald them with boiling water.
- In hot oil, fry both onions for 5-7 minutes, then put the rest of the vegetables in the pan. Simmer them in a lid for 20 minutes.
- Grind hot pepper in a blender, after removing seeds from it. Chop parsley finely. Mix the pepper and parsley with salt and seasoning. Add the resulting mixture to the vegetables.
- Continue stewing for 10 minutes.
According to this recipe, ratatouille is the easiest to cook; it will be tasty and rewarding, although it will, of course, look different from that prepared according to the original French recipe.
If desired, ratatouille can be cooked with meat or minced meat. For example, cut chicken breast fillets into slices and lay them between vegetables. You can make small “pancakes” from mincemeat and put them between zucchini and eggplants. The dish will be more satisfying if you add new potatoes to vegetables. Ratatouy recipes with cheese sauce are also popular. In this case, instead of olive oil, a mixture of cream or sour cream with finely grated cheese is used to prepare the sauce.
