Sunday, October 3, 2010

Simple Ratatouille Recipe aka "Rat-tat-tat-too-eeee!"


This vegan dish with a complicated sounding name (unless you have seen the Disney movie) is a hearty entrée perfect to make on a Sunday and enjoy all week. You can change up the proportions of vegetables to your liking and adjust spices as well. While I used fresh herbs, if they aren't in season you can easily use dried herbs in their place, although the amounts may need to be adjusted. I developed this recipe as part of the round three Project Food Blog challenge of pairing wines at a six-course vegan dinner party.

To modify this for the HMR Healthy Solutions Diet, omit oil, use 6 ounces of vegetable broth and two tablespoons of vinegar in place of wine.

1 1-lb eggplant, skinned and diced
2 tsp salt
1 28-oz can diced tomatoes
5 cloves garlic, peeled and diced
1 tsp black pepper
1/3 cup chopped fresh basil
1/2 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley
2 tbsp olive oil
3/4 lb yellow onion, diced
 2 bell peppers, any color, diced (I used four small peppers but they are hard to find sometimes)
1 1/4 lb zucchini, diced
6 oz dry white wine of your choice

Spread eggplant in a single layer on paper towels and sprinkle with salt. After twenty minutes, press eggplant with fresh towels to remove liquid that the salt has brought out. Do not rinse.

In a deep pot, cook tomatoes, garlic, ground pepper, basil, and parsley on medium heat.

In a skillet, cook onion and bell peppers in olive oil for ten minutes on medium-high heat. When the vegetables have started to brown, add mixture to pot with tomatoes. Add eggplant and zucchini to tomato mixture as well and stir to combine all ingredients.

Cover the pot and cook on medium-low for 45 minutes. Add wine and cook for an additional 15 minutes.

I served the ratatouille with a brown rice couscous I found at Whole Foods. This filling dish made a tasting portion for 10 with tons of leftovers and could easily make 8 entrée portions. Nutritional information does not include couscous. One serving has 120 calories, 3.5 grams of fat, 5.75 grams of fiber, 3 grams of protein.

3 comments:

RJ Flamingo said...

Looooove ratatouille! Can't wait to see the rest of it!

Merut said...

This would be a great dinner party dish. It is the perfect time of year to make it too. Love how you served yours over rice couscous!

Jane Kaylor said...

Thanks for the recipe!!! Love it
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it greatly increase tissue regeneration
sources taken from the internet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_nest_soup
hongkong-bird-nest.50webs.com/index_e.htm
http://www.euyansang.com/

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