Let's be honest, ratatouille is delicious but a real pain to make, right? All that fuss about cooking the vegetables separately and then bringing them together at the end to cook some more together makes for a lot of time in the kitchen and a lot of extra dirty dishes. It occurred to me that I could roast the vegetables, which would not only cut down on cooking steps and dishes, but get rid of some of the extra liquid in the vegetables that sometimes waters down what could have been a good ratatouille. I further cheated by using leftover chunky tomato sauce that I had made but you could roast garlic and onions along with the rest of the vegetables and make a sauce at the end with fresh tomatoes if you are so inclined.
As experiments go, this was a successful one. I had planned on serving this ratatouille on toasts made from a good sourdough boule, and topping the whole thing with mozzarella that I then broiled until melted and burnished around the edges. L. ate all of the bread in the night so instead we had bowls of this topped with mozzarella at just the perfect gooey stage.
1 large eggplant
2 zucchini
2 yellow squash
1/3 cup chopped basil leaves
2 cups of your favorite tomato sauce (one with lots of onion and garlic)
1 Tbsp olive oil
Salt to taste
Preheat the oven to 350. Line a baking tray with parchment paper.
Chop all of your vegetables into pieces of the same size and place them on the baking tray. Drizzle with the olive oil and salt well. Bake for 15 minutes.
After 15 minutes, remove the tray from the oven and raise the temperature to 450.
Stir the vegetables, place the tray back in the oven and cook for an additional 10 minutes.
Pour the tomato sauce into a saucepan. When the vegetables are done, remove from the oven and add to the saucepan. Turn the heat on low and heat up the tomato sauce with the vegetables in it until it is hot and bubbling at the edges of the pot.
Stir in the chopped basil and adjust salt levels if necessary. Can be eaten as is, with mozzarella, on toast as described above, or is excellent with firm white fish such as cod.
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