Ratatouille

After resorting to Pizza for lunch yesterday, I really wanted something better for dinner. Searching through the various recipe apps in my iPhone for recipes using eggplant (and being annoyed that the Betty Crocker cookbook does not work at the moment) I found a recipe in the Whole Foods Market Recipes app for Roasted Vegetable Ratatouille. This was perfect, as it also used my newly-repaired oven, so I could thoroughly test the repaired Bake element connections.
The recipe is as follows:
(Note: the recipe is not mine, it came from the Whole Foods Market Recipes app for iPhone, which is free to anyone interested. I put it here because it was fantastic, and I don't want to loose the recipe!)
1 lb eggplant, 1/2 inch dice
1/4 tsp salt
1 lb zucchini, 1 inch dice
1 lb yellow squash, 1 inch dice
1/2 lb yellow onion, 1 inch dice
1/2 lb red bell pepper, 1 inch dice
1/4 C extra virgin olive oil
1 lb Roma tomatoes, 1 inch dice
2 tbsp minced garlic
3 tbsp minced oregano
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
3 oz baby nonpareil capers, drained
Preheat oven to 400. Dice eggplant first. Combine with salt, set aside in colander to drain. Prepare remaining ingredients. Combine tomatoes, garlic, oregano and black pepper, set aside. Combine eggplant, zucchini, squash, onion and bell pepper, with olive oil. Place in roasting pan. Bake 45 minutes, stirring once during cooking. Stir in tomato mixture, bake 20 minutes. Stir in capers.

I got a bit over enthusiastic with the vegetables - I had the fresh eggplant, but I had purchased the other vegetables a week or so before, and decided to just use everything up and adjust the recipe accordingly. I am glad I did, as it turned out absolutely delicious! And I mean licking the pan yummy! The recipe calls for fresh garlic and fresh oregano, neither of which I had, so I used olive-oil packed garlic and dried oregano.

I ended up with about 2 pounds of leftovers, and have been told that refrigerating ratatouille overnight only makes it better.

This is a recipe I will definitely be repeating frequently. The ingredients are locally available and fresh at this time of year - I work in the middle of a vegetable producing farm area, and have ready access during the growing season to a decent variety of fresh vegetables at very cheap prices. This recipe uses five vegetables I can buy from the packing house produce stand just down the road from work, probably for less than $5 for a couple of pounds of each, and they have the vegetables all summer. I will be buying a larger jar of capers though - this used up my entire supply! I also plan to try other variations of this dish, in hopes that they are all just as good.

Breakfast this morning was the last of the strawberry yogurt, which I will not be buying any more of, at it was very sweet. I added a slice of bakery raisin bread, and coffee.

Lunch today will be more Ratatouille, as I had quite a bit left over, and it was beyond yummy fresh, and supposed to be even better the next day, so I plan to test this statement thoroughly! :)

Dinner tonight will include whatever I find at the produce stand tonight. Also, the local farmer's market is tonight, and is well worth checking for things the larger growers around work don't produce.

Last night I stopped by the local Aldi store, and picked up two bottles of Liebfraumilch white wine, a bottle of Chardonnay, two wedges of herbed cheese, and two packages of Genoa salami, which is a particular favorite of mine. So, the next few recipes should be fun, as I have plentiful ingredients at the moment!