Ratatoullie - Master Recipe #1

I chose Ratatouille for our first project recipe, mainly because I thought I could trick Jack into being interested due to his love the movie by the same name. We started our day at the Farmer's Market, selecting fresh eggplant, zuchinni, tomato, peppers, onions and garlic. Easy enough, right?

It took more than 2 hours to make! Blanching, peeling, juicing and seeding tomatoes was way messier than I considered!! And also - it's nearly impossible to figure out how many medium size tomatoes you need to make three cups of tomato pulp. We totally underestimated, and hence our Ratatouille was light on the tomato side, heavy on the pepper side. We pureed garlic by mincing and pressing with salt, something I've never done before and will count among the techniques we learn in this project. I also didn't know how wet eggplant and zuchinni were on the inside. You have dry them and pat them on paper towels to get the extra water out, and you also have to bake just the eggplant alone for 20 minutes before you assemble the rest of the dish.

So I'm slicing and dicing, and Jack is patting and drying, and we are ready to bake the eggplant. I'm feeling pretty good because I think we are going to pull it off - We line the cookie sheets with eggplant, Jack paints them with olive oil and sprinkles thyme and oregano and we are ready to cover them with foil for the initial bake. Except - We don't have any foil. We have wax paper, parchment paper, saran wrap, 2 gallon jumbo zip lock bags, snack zip lock bags and freezer paper. NO ALUMINUM FOIL.

So I go outside, where Jeff and Harrison are in the batting cage, to confirm we are out of foil and to make sure it's not in the garage for some weird purpose. I ask H to go to the store, and he replies "why can't you do it?" Jeff says he needs to hit one more bucket of balls and then he go get the foil. Do I have time for this? It's 400 degrees in my kitchen and we don't have the air on yet this summer! I don't know what will happen if I bake it without the foil, but I do it anyway. It worked out.

Ratatouille is a beautiful dish when made the Julia Child way, layering your vegetables and baking. Jeff said it was pretty good - right before he doused it with tabasco sauce.

-N