Becca and Nick

This meal started as many of our best do- with cocktail hour. The long cook time synced perfectly with a little, wine, cheese, and pita crackers! (Plus we had just gone to TJs!)

We used a recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks- “How to Cook Everything”. It was a Baked Ratatouille.

The ingredients (plus cocktails) courtesy of Trader Joe’s.

The pan is layered and ready to go! Loved the colors of this dish!

Mmmm… all baked up!

Ready to eat!

All in all, we thought the flavors in this dish were astounding! We listened to Sarah’s post and put some mozzarella on top 🙂 While eating we thought it would pair nicely with some garlic bread. Nom!

Quote of the evening: “I’m not sure this many vegetables is really good for you…” -Nick Eastman. Classic. Though I should say, he also thoroughly enjoyed the meal (he only wondered where the main course was once or twice 😉

Phil and Sarah

With a name like Disney’s Ratatouille Recipe how could we not try and follow it. Of course I made some adaptations:

Why use tomato paste to make sauce, when you can just use sauce?
Why not add some slices of fresh tomato in there too?
No fresh thyme? how bout magic holiday spice with thyme, sage, and oregano?

As with all good meals…

The sunset super yield. This one is gonna be pretty!

Ready for assembly

Ready for the Oven

Yay, color!

Ready for eating

Phil is ready for dinner

Sarah gets to add Marscapone to hers!

Super yummy! It’s amazing how good vegetables can be! Really glad I added the fresh tomatoes. Also, Marscapone is delicious. I bet it would also be really good if you baked it with mozzarella…..

Galen and Chloe

So Ratatouille, here is the deal; I’m impressed. I’ll be honest the only thing that I knew about the dish was the animated movie (the first time Molly and I ever hung out in SC, I know so cute. She and her boyfriend Matt came over to hang out with Jake, who naturally left, but they stayed and hung out and we all watched Ratatouille together. That story was mostly for Becca who I thought might enjoy it).

Back to the meal. Basically vegetables. Chloe and I made the Ratatouille Provencal, version, which I believe is the more stew like variety, versus the layered rounded dish from the film (also I’ll be honest, most of my recipes just come from my joy of cooking, the internet/my computer do not making surfing for recipes very appealing). So Ratatouille Provencal:

We begin with a delightful assortment of the called for veggies (notice my loaf of bread photo bombing in the background), then we let the dutch oven (my goodness do I love that pot) do the dirty work on cooking down the vegetables to their nearly stew-like state, and finally we serve. So seemingly simple, and yet so, so tasty. I was truly impressed. Chloe was just about overjoyed. Bravo to whatever it is that makes this particular combination such a success.

Albin and Jocie

A few years ago I was living in Chicago and working as a line cook in a fancy wine tasting restaurant. The menu wasn’t extensive, but you could order small items that would go with the wine: small brick oven pizzas, salads, cheese platters, a burger, we did a duck plate one time, and a couple other things. On my “lunch” break (aka dinner) I was allowed to make whatever I wanted with the ingredients in-house. After trying most things on the menu, I decided to branch out and make a few of my own items. It was fun! The three other chefs that I worked with got into it too. We would have these mini cooking lessons/ cook-offs and see who could make the best french omelets and stuff like that.

Ratatouille, the movie — great stuff! One day after recently watching it, I decided to make the dish itself, using nothing but movie to go off of. I went back to the walk-in fridge, dug up some zucchini, squash, and eggplant, sliced them up, layered them with cheeses on top of the red sauce I made that day for the pizzas, threw a piece of parchment paper over the top, and slide the dish into the brick oven. Fifteen minutes later, I had something that looked like this — success!

License: Some rights reserved by dedrawolff

Albin and I have since made this Ratatouille at home. We usually add in thin slices of sausage too, which is yummy. Once again, however, we thought it was about time to try a real recipe. And this time, we switched it up and made the stew version of Ratatouille instead of the layered dish version: