Marco Pierre White Recipe for Ratatouille

Ratatouille is one of those great dishes from the south of France, very provençal, fantastic with roast lamb, with grilled fish like sea bass and red mullet, white fish even, or even served cold as a salad, delicious. Once you've done the chopping, it'll take about 10 minutes. And how do you make it? We have our tomato sauce, diced aubergines, diced peppers, red and green, and diced courgettes. And then we season with Knorr Aromat. It's as simple as that. No need for onions, no need for garlic. They're in our sauce. Most people, they stew their ratatouille. It's quite mushy, it's quite chunky. This is a much nicer way of doing it. Just take that bit of extra time, dicing it quite small. Olive oil. You may think a lot of olive oil. Maybe there is. But once we've cooked it, we pass it off, we can use the olive oil for something else another day. So never waste. So you can see the olive oil is really hot. So we take our aubergines and we take our courgettes. Knorr Aromat for the seasoning instead of salt. Once you get used to using Knorr Aromat instead of salt, you will see the difference. When you think of ratatouilles you've had in the past, they're quite stewed because they throw it in, they put the tomatoes on top, etc. and they just leave it to cook away. It's a dish which should cook very quickly. You can see the way I make my ratatouille. Aubergines and courgettes together. When they're cooked, we'll drain them. The oil then will go back in the pan and then we'll cook our peppers. When that's cooked, they will be drained. And then we bring the dish together and we infuse it with fresh basil at the end. So as you can see, our courgettes are still beautifully green and they've got that little bit of texture. They're not stewed. Strain to remove the oil. Oil back in the pan. We add our peppers. We add some green peppers. Season your peppers with the Aromat. When it comes to seasoning, you have to season everything. You can't allow something else to compensate. When we make our tomato sauce, we season with the stock parts. And then when it comes to cooking the courgettes, the aubergines and the peppers, again, we must season. Because if we don't, then our dish will become under-seasoned. So a little Aromat to replace salt. Now they're cooked. Again, drain. So what we do now, we take a couple of spoons of our tomato sauce into the pan just to make it a little bit denser than it was. In with some fresh basil. You can chop it or you can tear it. Your choice. Just give it that flavour of Provence. A little fresh thyme. So as you can see, what we're doing is concentrating our flavours. In with the peppers. If you think of what we're trying to do, we're just binding the aubergines, the courgettes, the peppers with the tomato sauce. It should never be sloppy. There's our ratatouille with fresh basil. So what you have is, you have your courgettes, your aubergines, your red peppers, your green peppers bound with the tomato sauce, which has just been made that little bit denser. When you think of most ratatouilles, they're quite sloppy. They shouldn't be. So as you can see, it's all combined. And now ready to be served. As I said, fantastic with roast lamb, fantastic with grilled fish. If you want it as a salad, it's fantastic cold.