Ratatouille with heirloom veggies

Whoa, it's been a long time! September almost went by without my noticing, had a really good time visiting friends the last couple weeks, but it's nice to be home and cooking again.

Inspired by some beautiful heirloom zucchini and eggplants from Suzie's Organic Farm at the grocery store, K looked up a few recipes for ratatouille and we decided to follow the one from Tartelette, attributed to her french mother, which was the right choice. Note to self: when in doubt go for the mom's recipe :) Update: The link to the recipe is broken... Full text is reproduced below.

The dish was super easy to put together, sauteeing each vegetable a bit before adding the next, and then stewing for about an hour basically unattended. And it made quite a lot. Easily enough for a main course for 4-5 people. All the veggies were good, but the Rosa Bianca eggplants (white flesh with white/purple skin) were particularly amazing, which is good because they were easily the most expensive thing that we got at the store.

That clove of garlic sitting on top was a knock out spread on a baguette. Kristen tried to convince me that roasted garlic was the real vegan butter, and while it is super delicious, I still ain't buying it.

Also happy World Vegetarian Day! A great day to go for the lentil burger or the mushroom risotto. Oh man, I need to make some mushroom risotto soon.

UPDATE: skillet smashed potatoes topped with ratatouille topped with an over easy fried egg is probably the best breakfast I've ever had.

Here is the original Tartelette recipe, retrieved from The Internet Archive.

Mom's Ratatouille:
1 medium onion (peeled and diced)
1 eggplant (peeled every other strip and diced)
3-4 zucchini (peeled every other strip and diced)
1 red bell pepper (we used orange because no red ones at the farmers market)
1 green bell pepper
4 tomatoes
1 can good quality tomatoes (we used one 14oz can of fire roasted tomatoes)
5 garlic cloves (we like ours unpeeled and whole but some don't...do as you prefer)
Herbes de Provence
Or a mix of thyme, parsley, oregano, lavender, all spice and a pinch of basil
salt and pepper to taste
extra virgin olive oil

In a large saute pan set over medium (and I mean the largest you have that you can put a lid on), sautee the onion in a bit of olive oil until translucid. Add the diced eggplant and sautee until it becomes golden in color. Add a dash more olive oil and add the zucchini, then the peppers, tomaotoes and canned tomatoes. Add the whole unpeeled garlic cloves, the spices, salt and pepper. Do not stir. Cover with a lid and let stew for aout 15 minutes. At this point the vegetables will have reduced a bit in volume from cooking and you will have room to stir and mix the herbs with the rest of the ingredients in the pan. Turn the heat down to medium low and simmer for at least 30 to 40 minutes. Uncover and let simmer 20 to 30 minutes on low until most of the cooking liquid has evaporated.
Et Voila...

Menu planning like it's the dead of winter

As the title suggests, we did a weird job planning our menu this week: pesto linguine (with almost our whole entire basil plant), a very rich bread pudding, and a hearty potato, leek, and bean stew with biscuits.

Asparagus Bread Pudding
Kristen has made this one once or twice, but this was my first attempt.

It had a couple of things I liked and a couple I didn't. The gruyere and dill were perfect, and the bread bakes with this crisp chewy top layer that is up there with the burnt edges of a lasagna. As some of the comments on Heidi's site say, the asparagus were way overcooked in the oven. I'm not entirely sure how to remedy this. We have tried both black olives and mushrooms and the olive version was definitely superior. Also, I would maybe pull back on the liquid a little bit next time, enough to moisten the bread but not enough to make it soggy (although it is supposed to be bread pudding, what do I know)


Leek and White Bean Cassoulet
Another one from Veganomicon: At this point I feel pretty comfortable saying, best cookbook ever.

After an unnecessarily long day of work yesterday, I actually really enjoyed cooking this big overcomplicated stew (and eating it wasn't bad either). I did not however enjoy stopping everything to drive to the store for corn starch when I realized half way through that we didn't have any.

The flavors were spot on, with a super savory taste from the leeks and a heaping tablespoon of fresh thyme from our balcony garden predominating. We didn't have any earth balance (and I'm guessing I probably won't buy it again any time soon) so I used unsalted butter. Here is the thing though -- unsalted butter is much less salty than buttery flavor EB -- add salt! Also please don't disrespect me real vegans, I am but a hobbyist.

Couple notes for myself for next time: smaller biscuits will probably cook up a little better. And this should've been obvious, but undercook the potatoes slightly because they'll finish in the oven.