Vegtember: Goats Cheese Ratatouille
It has been quite a frustrating weekend in terms of the Vegtember stuff. I had planned to record a video blog about going to a Farmers market to buy some locally produced goods. But unfortunately the advertised one in Plymouth was not actually taking place (bloody interweb being unreliable). So my big plan was out of the window. If anyone knows where an alternative one is taking place in Devon before the end of the month (and preferably somewhere easy to get to on the train) then do drop me a line.
On Saturday I only finished of some portions of stuff left over form previous blog posts. Today I decided to cook my little brothers fabulously tasty Goats Cheese Ratatouille, had this loads of times before at his house but never cooked it before. It is definitely one for the keeper net and I will be having this as part of my normal meal rotation going forward regardless of what I am doing about meat! You will probably need a casserole dish to do this properly, and the recipe below is just cut and pasted from my brothers email so it is his words as well as his work.
Goats Cheese Ratatouille
Goats cheese ratatouille
Ingredients
1 aubergine
1 courgette
1 onion
3 cloves garlic
1 red pepper
5 or 6 mushrooms
Handful fresh basil
Thyme (dried or fresh)
4 tomatoes
3 tbsp red wine vinegar
75g goats cheese
Salt
Olive oil
Pre-heat the oven to about 150˚c. Heat some olive oil in a casserole dish, cube the aubergine and fry for 5 or 6 minutes, until it has just started to soften and change colour. Take it out of the pan and set aside.
Slice the courgette and fry for 5 or 6 minutes, take them out and put them on the plate with the aubergine.
Fry the onion and garlic in the casserole (you might need to add a little bit more olive oil).
Chop the pepper into quite large pieces, cut the mushrooms into halves and roughly chop the basil. Add these to the pan, along with the courgette and aubergine and thyme.
Cut the tomatoes into quarters (maybe eighths if they’re big) and add to the pan. Leave to cook for 5 minutes, then add the red wine vinegar, goats cheese and a pinch of salt. Stir and leave on the heat for another 5 minutes or so, then put the lid on and put in the oven.
Cook for about an hour, checking every now and then to make sure it isn’t drying out.
Serve with a few pieces of toast.
