Ratatouille from the film Ratatouille

by Barry Lewis

Serves
6
Prep time
20 mins
Bake time
120 mins
Difficulty
Medium
Ingredients Method

Ingredients

For the base sauce

1 red pepper, halved & de-seeded

1 yellow pepper, halved & de-seeded

400g tin chopped tomatoes

3 sprigs of parsley

5 sprigs of thyme

1 large onion, chopped roughly

4 garlic cloves

For the ratatouille

2 courgettes, thinly sliced

2 aubergines (egg plants), thinly sliced

4 tomatoes, thinly sliced

2 yellow courgettes, thinly sliced

Extra bits for both steps

2 extra garlic cloves, chopped

Olive oil

Salt & Pepper to taste

Sugar to taste

Balsamic vinegar to taste (optional)

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Homemade Ratatouille from the film Ratatouille

Alright after doing some research and watching the movie ratatouille I had to give making my own version a try, I didn’t have to necessarily do certain steps, so i’ll mention them below to save you some time potentially, but it was super delicious! This could actually be classed as more of a confit biyaldi rather than a ratatouille but that’s a whole other conversation as we are competing with pixels here!

Ratatouille movie dish
A screenshot from the film!

Let’s make Ratatouille! (Rat in your chef hat optional)

Base sauce

To make the base sauce you can just skip this and use a can of chopped tomatoes if you wish, however this sauce alone would be great as a pizza topping or soup, it’s very tasty!

Arrange the peppers that are halved on a baking tray cut size down, drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper, bake in an oven at 210fan/230c until blistered, this will take approximately 25 minutes or so, allow to cool slightly. Meanwhile fry the onion and garlic in a pan for 5 minutes to soften up with a little oil, add in the tinned tomatoes, parsley & thyme and bring up to a simmer for 10 minutes, roughly chop the cooled peppers, then add to the pan and continute to simmer for 5 more minutes.

Take off the heat and allow to cool, remove the thyme stalks (they are quite easy to spot), before using a stick blender to puree it all together until smooth. Once blended, taste it and make sure you are happy, perhaps add some more salt or pepper, or a little sugar, tweak until happy. Pour into an oven proof dish, spread evenly – you may not want to add it all, so use it for a soup or pizza topping.

Building the ratatouille

Well, first things first this next step is completely optional. You can just lie the vegetables down on top of eachother in layers, however this extra effort does at least look really vibrant!

Using the vegetables, sit them in the sauce standing upwards, alternating regularly in order to create a symmetrical border all around the dish, this is dependant upon the dish used to determine what shape you use, mine looked like this below, meaning I could do an inner circle. This is quite time consuming, but worth it in my opinion.

ratatouille recipe

Once done in a small bowl add some olive oil, the 2 more garlic cloves, salt and pepper and mix well until combined. Drizzle over the vegetables evenly.

Cover with baking parchment over the top, gently tucked in to prevent it blowing off in the oven (if using fan) and bake for approximately 90 minutes at a lower temperature of 120fan/140c or equivalent.

Serve on a plate drizzled with some sauce, a touch more olive oil and perhaps a little balsamic vinegar if you like it as much as I do! This was so delicious, fresh and vibrant, I loved it.

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