So the recipe I'm gonna show you today is my take on a ratatouille.
Now ratatouille weirdly the classic French veg dish, is one of the most
searched dishes on the Internet at the moment, why? I think it's because you've
got a load of veg you don't know what to do with. So let me give you my version
that I think is really flexible, really open to taking whatever you've got. I'm
gonna serve it on a puff pastry base, so it's kind of like a posh pizza and the
kids love it, I love it, I think you're gonna love it.
Dad, do you want this on your pizza?
No thank you, put it back, thank you very much love you.
A classic French ratatouille would be courgettes, peppers of all colours, onions
aubergine. I haven't got aubergine I've only got a yellow pepper here but I have
got asparagus, an old courgette, I've got leeks instead of onions, got a squash and
a cauliflower. Mine's kind of like a grilled veg ratatouille, we make a base
tomato sauce. Slice up about 6 cloves of garlic, go in with some olive oil and
I'm gonna put the garlic here. I'm gonna put in some basil leaves, 2 tins of
tomatoes, I'm just gonna put a bit of water in these tins and in they go.
So Jools is breaking up the tomatoes, that
is the basic tomato sauce that will receive the veggies. Let's start with the
courgette. So run your knife down so it's like quarters, put it into a dry pan on a
high heat. If you had a barbecue use it, if you had a griddle pan use it.
I'm going to do exactly the same with the leeks, and then I just cut it so it fits
the pan. Now this scalding, instead of it being kind of oily and sweet it kind of
scalds to give you a smokiness, and it gives you a nuttiness and that when
mixed with the tomato sauce gives you the most incredible dish. You could even
use if you wanted to, frozen cauliflower and still char it up in here and still
stew it up in there so it's all good. I'll just cut the peppers into quarters
the asparagus can go in whole with the cauliflower, take off the little florets.
I'm only going to use about a quarter of this and then slice these into 1cm slices.
Just like that.
When these are kind of all nicely charred
what I want you to do is remove these from the hot scalding pan, so now these
are out I'll replace them with these veggies so it's like a little factory line.
Now down here I'm gonna slice it about 1cm across
and we'll simply stir it in and it's gonna be delicious.
So just continue charring up the veg in the dry pan, and as soon as it's nice and
scalded, then just chunk it up and add it to the tomato sauce. So as that simmers
away nicely, that'll cook for about 20-25 minutes. Here I've got 2 shop bought
puff pastries one is regular and one is gluten-free, because I've got 2 kids
that are gluten-free. Get them out the pack, unroll them and then get it on the
tray and even keep it on the paper that it comes in. So I'm gonna get myself a
regular eating knife, and about an inch away from the edge just very lightly
score it, so do that to the other one. Now at this point I can get some olive oil
and just give it a nice little drizzle, and just give it a little rub all over.
Now with these 2 bases I'm gonna whack them in the oven for about 15 - 20 minutes,
at 200 degrees Celsius until nice and lightly golden.
Okay so these 2 beauties are done I nearly overcooked the gluten-free one
the kids were running around what can I say.
So if you can have a little look here, you can see where I did the little line
and I'm gonna push it in okay, and the reason that is is because I'm going to
fill it with our beautiful version of a ratatouille.
So now the veggies are nice and soft and tender and cooked
this will be amazing in so many different ways. Now we
do need to balance the flavour, and the way to do that is a little tablespoon of
vinegar, so red wine vinegar, white wine vinegar, whatever you've got to hand then
a good couple of tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil.
Tear some of these beautiful basil leaves and then just simply season it to
taste. Then you could toss that in pasta, you could put it in lasagna you could
turn this into a soup simply by adding some stock. So, because I know River will
be a pain in the backside, I'm gonna blend it up. So I'll do one with then one
without and just show you the flexibility of this dish.
That's done, and then on the gluten-free one I will put this sauce. So look there is gluten-free
pizza with a pureed sauce, this is my puff pastry one. It's a brilliant way to
use up veg, if you wanted to put a little smoky bacon in this you could, put some
tuna, olives, capers, happy days. Right just take the veggies to the edge. Feta?
It'd be amazing, of course you could use a mozzarella you could use a feta like Jools
suggested, I'm going to use and British cheeses and these will melt
beautifully. So a last few little bits of basil nice, so just in the oven for 10
minutes, just to melt that cheese and heat it all up delicious.
Lunch time!
Wowzers, look at that. Woooo!
That was a hit with the family, guys you happy? Yeah! Okay, onwards and upwards enjoy.