Ratatouille Recipe

Tools and Devices

• A baking pan. Oval or round. Ceramic or glass are traditional choices but I've seen cast iron skillet used for the purpose as well.
• Oven
• Very sharp knife
• Mandolin (optional)
• Cheese grater (fine)
• Immersion blender
• Parchment paper

Ingredients

• Yellow zucchini
• Green zucchini
• Garlic - 2 full bulbs
• Tomatoes - 5-6
• Thin Egg Plant (looks more aesthetic. Otherwise cut a thick one in half)
• Red Bell Pepper
• Yellow Bell Pepper
• Onions (I didn't use them because my ladies hate baked onions)
• Salt
• White Wine - 350 ml
• Anchovies - 7-8 pieces
• Basil Leaves - 6-8
• Olive Oil
• Good quality Salt
• Good quality black pepper
• Thyme leaves - a few. Up to your taste.
• Shallots - 2
• Goat Cheese - enough for it to give the sauce a kink in flavor. Up to you how strong you want it to be pronounced.
• Parmesan Cheese

Method

• Wrap both garlic in foil, add olive oil, salt and pepper and bake at 400F for 25 minutes..
• Peel and cut shallots
• Preheat the oven to 400 F.
• About 5 minutes before garlic is ready combine shallots, thyme and wine in a pot and start cooking. Not crazy boiling but cooking well.
• Mix garlic and anchovies. (Squeeze out the eatable part from garlic's peel) .
• Cut few tomatoes and roast them with fresh thyme, few garlic cloves, pepper
• Add to the sauce and simmer for additional 5 - 10 mins.
• While the sauce is cooking - cut the veggies in very thin slices - 2 millimeters at most but not see through either.
• Cut peppers in halves
• Place cut vegetables in separate containers and line them up around your cooking dish in the order you are planning to layer them.
• I used a knife because I love cutting but for efficiency purposes a good mandolin can be useful.
• When the sauce is ready - pour it into a cylinder shaped container and using immersion blender mix well together with roasted tomatoes.
• Start adding goat cheese to the mix to add it additional flavor, salt and pepper to taste.
• Pour some sauce into the bottom of the cooking dish.
• Apply a gentle layer of grated cheese
• Start layering vegetables against the wall and continue doing it all around in a continuous chain until it comes to the center of the dish.  There are different designs of layering to choose from. I like them in a tight, continuous chain. Some like them layered in separate circles. Some like them more spacious. There is no "correct" pattern - make it aesthetically pleasant to you.
• In a given example I layered the following sequence - green zucchini, yellow pepper, purple eggplant, tomato, yellow zucchini, red pepper. That sequence made the color scheme more appealing to my eye.
• Once done layering - pour the sauce on top of the layers - let it fill 3/4 of the vegetables depth or so.
• Put another layer of cheese if you want.
• Throw in some basil leaves, hand torn.
• Put a piece of parchment paper on top of the dish with a hole cut out in the center. Don't press it in.
• Place your dish on a metal tray to contain occasional leakage while cooking.
• Cook for an hour.
• Serve hot.