Ratatouille

Ratatouille is a French side dish. It consists of stewed vegetables in a sauce. I found it one day surfing on the net here. It looked extremely interesting, but it was not until I actually made it that I realized that I had actually stumbled upon gold! The flavor of the roasted vegetables spread across the dish is simply wonderful. This is a slightly time consuming dish, but completely worth the effort. I've tried to make this with local vegetables easily available in India. It has tons of ingredients, each adding to the recipe in their unique way :) Do try to find out how.

Ingredients

• 1 Green Capsicum
• 1 Red Capsicum
• 1 Onion
• 1 Big Green Chili
• 6-7 cloves of garlic
• 6 medium sized tomatoes 
• 1 Carrot (big)
• 1 Long Brinjal
• 3-4 small potatoes
• 1 cup Spinach
• 1/2 Cup White Sauce
• Oregano
• Olive Oil
• Salt and Pepper

Method

• Roast both the capsicums, green chilli, garlic and 4 tomatoes directly on the flame until their skin is completely black.
• Peel of the skin and chop them finely.
• Chop the onion and carrot too.
• In some olive oil, add the garlic and heat for a while. Then add the onions. Let them fry for 2-3 minutes and then add all the roasted vegetables as well as carrots. 
• Add salt and pepper. 
• Cover with a lid and cook for almost 20 to 25 minutes or until all the vegetables are soft. Alternatively, this can be done in a pressure cooker. 
• After this cools down, mash it with a hand blender to make the red sauce.
• Wilt the finely cut spinach in a little water. This can be added as is to the white sauce or can be pureed and added to the sauce.
• Cut potatoes in a round shape and parboil them.
• Cut the remaining two tomatoes and the brinjal in similar sized rounds.
• In a baking dish add the red sauce as the base. then layer it with the white spinach sauce. Top it with the parboiled potatoes, brinjal and tomatoes in a spiral fashion.
• Drizzle a little olive oil on top. 
• Sprinkle with oregano.
• Bake covered for around 20 minutes and uncovered for 10 minutes.
• Enjoy!