Ratatouille with garlic bread

Ingredients for ratatouille:

  • 4 red peppers, chopped up however
  • A medium-sized onion, chopped up
  • A large can of whole tomatoes.
  • Some white wine.
  • A handful of parsley, chopped up
  • Minced garlic, 2 tablespoons
  • Thyme, 2 sprigs
  • Bay leaves, 2-4
  • Olive oil, 1/2 cup
  • Cucumbers, chopped into roundels (I dislike zuccini and eggplant, so used cucumbers instead)

Ingredients for garlic bread:

  • Minced garlic from 4 cloves
  • Salted butter, softened
  • Some parsley, chopped up finely

Instructions:

Let’s do the ratatouille first. While it cooks, we’ll make garlic bread.

  1. In a large pot or dutch oven, heat 1/4 cup of olive oil.
  2. Once the oil is hot, throw in the onions, the garlic, half the portion of thyme, and the bay leaves.
  3. Once the onions lose their raw color, throw in the red peppers and saute for 10 minutes. I wouldn’t recommend browning, but you do you.
  4. To prevent browning, add the rest of the olive oil. Throw in the tomatoes - whole, chopped, it doesn’t matter.
  5. Add in 1 and a 1/2 cups of white wine. The recipe I used called for a dry wine like sauvignon blanc but I had chardonnay at home and went with it. Turned out great.
  6. Season with lots of salt and a cartload of pepper. I’m serious about the pepper. I used about a tablespoon and a half. A good amount of salt too.
  7. Now let it simmer on medium heat for about 30 minutes.

Garlic bread time! (Original recipe: https://www.thekitchenmagpie.com/homemade-garlic-bread-recipe-using-sourdough/)

  1. Preheat your oven to 350F.
  2. In a small bowl or cup, Heat up the butter so that it’s quite runny.
  3. Mix in the garlic and parsley. Stir well.
  4. Spread some aluminium foil on a baking sheet. Coat the bottom of the sheet with some olive oil.
  5. Spread out the sourdough slices on the baking sheet.
  6. Coat the garlic bread slice-tops with the garlic/butter mix. Generously.
  7. Heat this in the oven for about 10 minutes, or until it’s nice and golden brown.

Due to the craziness surrounding grocery shopping during a pandemic, we’ve decided to visit the grocery store once every two weeks. If we run out, we make do with whatever we’ve got in the fridge; but more often than not, I find myself in possession of vegetables in the fridge that are about to go bad. I’d just been to the grocery store and had bought a bag of red peppers, and when I was stowing them away, I realized that there was half a bag of them in the fridge and I needed to use them, and fast. While looking around for ideas on what to cook, I came across a recipe for Ratatouille by Martha Stewart. I didn’t have all the ingredients, but improvised it to use what I could find. It ended up being the heartiest meal we’d had in a while. As in my heart is so full. I shouldn’t over-eat, but I guess I’m preparing myself for a long hike we decided to do every Sunday. I enjoyed whipping this up, and I hope you do too. When I say “you” I’m usually just referring to my future self, but hey, I posted this on the Internet, so “you” could be anyone. Definitely experiment with this recipe. It’s quite forgiving. And tasty.