Pixar Ratatouille!

I don’t know what I did to deserve this. All I think about is the movie Ratatouille. I haven’t even seen it in at least 6 years. Besides that, I have a problem where I watch too many cooking/baking videos on YouTube and came across the Pixar version of the dish, AKA: Confit Byaldi.

Ratatouille started in France, as a cheap dish you could throw together with in-season vegetables for poor farmers who needed to fill their bellies. I also happen to be poor and a farmer. I have a new basil plant that is only half dead so I qualify 😉

Confit byaldi is only a different variation of the original ratatouille. Sort of like how a restaurant can put beautiful beef chunks with caramelized onions, sauce drizzled over it and with perfectly fried little cylinder shaped pillowy potatoes with the title “deconstructed”, however in the end it’s still just tater tot casserole.

We’ve got $24 between our two bank accounts for the week BUT Sebastian won a raffle for brand new fake versions of shoes (!!!!! Will post about it!) so I thought, let’s make ratatouille, but FANCY. So now that I’m done doing the thing I hate where blogs talk too much before the recipe, here’s the recipe!

Ich habe es außerdem auch in Deutsch geschrieben, Ich habe es in den Kommentaren hinterlegt 🙂

 

Ingredients

For the Sauce

• 1-2 Red Bell Peppers (Capsicum)
• 1 400 g can of crushed tomatoes
• 4 Garlic cloves
• 1 Onion, diced
• Italian herbs – totally up to you. I used a mix of parsley, basil, oregano, thyme

Vegetable layer

Note – You can use whatever vegetables that are cheap and you have on hand. These are just what were available to me at the time!

• Italian herbs – again, up to you
• 1 Zucchini
• 1 Eggplant
• 4 Tomatoes
• 200 g sliced mushrooms

Heat oven at 200 C (392 F). De-seed bell peppers and place on lined baking sheet. Roast for ~15 min, until soft and with a bit of charring.

Meanwhile, in a pot, cook onions until translucent. Add garlic and cook until fragrant. Add can of chopped tomatoes and your herbs, plus salt and pepper.

When the peppers are done, toss them in (you can also add the ugly leftover bits of the veggies you’ll be chopping!) and blend with an immersion blender until smooth.

Cut a cross in the bottoms of your tomatoes and blanch for 3 min, until their peel starts to come off. One of mine peeled itself. For some reason, it felt wrong to watch.

Peel your tomatoes and slice them thinly. With a mandoline slicer, slice your other veggies until you have a fat pile that’s a bit threatening. My tomatoes kinda fell apart but nobody’s perfect. They’re still beautiful to me

Next put a layer of sauce in a pan, preferably a circular one like in the movie, but there’s only square ones here 😦 Then begin layering your veggies. You will either get into a flow or you’ll get someone else to do it and conveniently have to play with the dogs until the moment they’re done, AKA Sebastian’s technique.

Drizzle some olive oil and more herbs and pepper. Stick it in the oven at 180 C (356 F) for about an hour until it’s bubbling and lightly browned. Sprinkle on some salt and you’re good to go!

I actually had to fill two dishes because they were all too small, and the second one ended up being the ugly sibling.

It got eaten first though so it wouldn’t feel left out, and dare I say tasted better. Maybe because we connected.

I didn’t originally plan to take all these pictures and document it, but I was too excited about it to not. So if you actually read it, then good on you! If you actually make it, you’re probably the only person of everyone who’s read it, let’s be honest here lol. I want to hear how it goes if anyone does 😉

ALSO I made my very first batch of stir-fry with tofu rather than meat. Absolutely hated it, it was terrible, but I’m still proud of it! And yes, that is a Christmas plate. I like Christmas.

Anyway I’ll post about the new shoes once it’s all sorted out. We’re moving four times before the end of the year and I have health and money issues, so I’m internally screaming, but in other news I’ve switched to buying pre-washed potatoes rather than dirty ones so that’s very exciting. They’re beautiful.

Alright, well thank you for reading and you shall see me in the next post. Please like and comment anything because I love hearing from the readers. It makes me very happy ☺❤

Lindsey