Monday, July 28, 2008

Ratatouille, my way

annesratatouille

There are many, many ways to make ratatouille. Most of them include eggplant. Not my favorite vegetable by any means, so I never eat it. I do however like fennel, and definitely want some of that in my ratatouille. And most of all, I want peppers. I use bell peppers of different colors - red, green and yellow - and to tell you the honest truth, for this I simply used frozen, already cut up strips. See, I stumbled upon a huge bag of frozen peppers a while ago - a LOT cheaper than buying them fresh, and with no additives, so I picked them up. Hence the weird measurement in the recipe - if using fresh, I'd say you'd need at least four or five.

I loved this with some grilled salmon and cooked bulgur, and stay tuned to hear what I did with the leftovers!

Ratatouille, my way
Serves 4

1 onion
2 garlic cloves
1 zucchini
1 small fennel bulb
700 ml - a little less than three cups - of bell peppers cut into strips, different colors
3 tomatoes
1/2-1 tsp chilli powder
1/2-1 tsp cumin
1/2-1 tsp coriander
1/2-1 tsp thyme, dried
1/2-1 tsp oregano, dried
olive oil

Chop the onion and garlic coarsely. Cut lengthwise down the zucchini, about 1 cm thick, so that you only get the outer parts. Discard the middle section, and dice the rest. Cut the fennel into thin slices.

Dunk the tomatoes into boiling water and peel them. Cut into wedges, discard the seeds.

Heat a little olive oil in a pot or deep frying pan, and fry onion and garlic on low heat until softened. Add all the other veggies, and all the spices. Leave on low heat, covered, for about half an hour or until everything has softened nicely. Taste to see if you like the seasoning, and adjust.

Recipe in Swedish:
Min ratatouille

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey there Anne, that is a neat idea using fennel instead. I however LOVE eggplant, so maybe I will stick with my recipe, and throw in fennel anyway. (Seeing as how I also love fennel...) Though the trick for me is to not stew all the veggies with the tomatoes. That is the flavor that always puts me on edge when I do ratatouille. But this innovation sounds darn good! Thanks for sharing!

Anonymous said...

Since ratatouille is my favorite thing to do, I see it as my duty to chare MY way of doing it too ;)
I use ZUCCHINI instead of eggplant, plus red/yellow bell pepper, onion, GARLIC, maybe carrot, champinions, RED WINE, canned tomatoes, basil ,thyme, salt , pepper, a tiny bit of sugar, maybe some balsamic... a pinch od chili and a drop of soy sauce can also be added after checking the taste. cook for loooong (until tomatoe juice has evaporated and the stew become thick and rich and the taste deep.....)
Then eat w grilled fish or lamb or other meat and haricot verts and red wine and fresh bread!

Just Cook It said...

You have a really lovely blog. I was recently in Stockholm as well so it's nice to read food stories from a Stockholm resident.

Jeanne said...

I also often use zucchini instead of eggplant, but that's more because this is what my mom used to do, rather than disliking eggplant. I love eggplant! Will definitely be adding fennel in the future though :)