Ratatouille
Need a new idea for preparing those summer veggies? Why not make some Ratatouille? This dish looks awfully complicated and time consuming, I know, but it really isn’t. As long as you have a mandoline slicer you can make this dish quite quickly. When shopping for your vegetables, try to pick ones out that are as close to the same diameter as you can get. Chinese eggplant (long and thin) will work great for this dish. Don’t worry if you can’t find Chinese eggplant, I used a regular sized eggplant and it worked out well. Serve this beautiful dish as a veggie appetizer or over rice as a main dish. My 1 year old loved the ratatouille over some mashed potatoes.
Ingredients:
1 Eggplant (preferably a Chinese eggplant but a regular will do just fine as well)
1 Red Bell Pepper
1 Yellow Squash
1 Zucchini
1-2 Cups Tomato Sauce (use my tomato sauce recipe or any other tomato sauce you like)
Olive Oil
Salt & Pepper
Fresh Thyme
Directions:
1. Preheat your oven to 375°F.
2. Trim the ends off your vegetables. Set your mandoline slicer to about 1/8 inch thick. Slice all your vegetables. Stack your eggplant slices and cut them into 4 equal wedges. Cut your bell pepper slices into 4-6 pieces depending on how big they are. Do this to try and get the vegetables as close in size to each other as possible.
3. Depending on how saucy you want your dish to be, evenly cover the bottom of your baking pan with 1-2 cups of tomato sauce. Begin arranging your vegetables in a pattern starting at one corner of the baking pan and wrapping around towards the center.
4. Once all the vegetables are arranged, drizzle them with a little olive oil. Season the vegetables with salt and pepper and add some fresh thyme leaves to top it all off. 
5. Bake the ratatouille for about 45-50 minutes or until the vegetables are clearly cooked.
Perullo Press 