Ratatouille with Sizzle

I trotted out to the garden late in the afternoon to pick a few veggies for dinner. Well, it turned out to be way more than "a few veggies." Did I forget it's August? The month of way too much produce for the ordinary person in her ordinary life? Stay away from the garden for a couple days and gremlins sneak in to inject plants with steroids. It's crazy! But wonderful.

Whew! The garden surprised me after a couple days away with about 20 times more than we can eat.
I'll give away most of those great English cucumbers (they're appreciated by residents at the assisted living place where my mom lives). I'll put on my apron and figure out the rest. 

Anybody up for eggplant? We planted just one variety this year, and it all ripened at the same time. How inconvenient!  The eggplants are at their peak—purple/black and glossy. They must be used soon. The fruits are too small, mostly, for eggplant Parmesan, which is my favorite. It's a good year for eggplant volume, but not so much for size. So it'll be ratatouille that makes its way into the freezer to remind us in the dead of winter that we had a glorious August harvest. Why is it so difficult to remember when it's cold. grey and wet that we had these bright warm days (even tho smoky) just a few months back?

Usually I make roasted ratatouille in big batches and freeze it. Today I didn't mean to harvest all this stuff, but since I had so much, and it was so perfectly fresh and beautiful, I decided to revert to my earlier approach to ratatouille—frying—and make enough for one dinner for two. Let me tell you, it hardly made a dent in the volume of just-picked produce. I'll rally tomorrow or the next day to do the big ratatouille roasting operation. (Roasted ratatouille recipe coming soon.)

In the meantime, I remember how much work it is to do fried as opposed to roasted. With small amounts, however, it isn't that big of a deal. I added a couple new elements: jalapeno peppers and smoked salt. I gotta say, yummers! Here's how to make fried ratatouille with a peppery twist.

Ratatouille with Sizzle

Ingredients (for 2 or 3 people)

• 2 small to medium zucchini, yellow, green, or striped
• 1 medium eggplant
• 1 small onion
• 2 cloves garlic
• 3 jalapeno peppers (optional)
• 1 sweet red pepper
• 2 cups roughly chopped fresh tomatoes 
• smoked salt to taste (I used Trader Joe's South African Seasoning Blend)
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary (important!)
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
• 2-6 tablespoons olive oil (huge disparity, I know. Stick with me.)
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Make life easier and use two non-stick fry pans. Cut the zukes into about one-inch sized pieces. The eggplant may be sliced into slightly larger uniform-sized pieces. Dice the onion and mince the garlic. Mince the jalapeno and slice the sweet pepper into uniform chunks. Get it all ready before starting.

Stir fry the zukes in 2 tablespoons olive oil over medium-high heat. At the same time, stir fry the eggplant in a separate pan. Eggplant tends to eat oil, so I start with 2 tablespoons and when the pan gets dry and the eggplant threatens to burn, I add a little water. It boils away and the eggplant is just fine. Combine the eggplant and zukes and set aside.

The eggplant and zukes are in the smaller pan. The onions, peppers and garlic are in the larger pan, where all ingredients will converge in the end. 

In the larger pan, saute the garlic and onion for a few minutes in 2 tablespoons olive oil. Add the peppers and stir fry for a couple more minutes. Dump the zukes and eggplant into the onion/pepper/garlic/rosemary mix and turn off the heat. Rosemary is a big deal for this recipe. Nothing else will do the trick.

Zukes, eggplant, onion, garlic, peppers stir fried and combined. 

Put the cut-up tomatoes into the now-vacant frying pan. Cook over medium-high heat until the tomatoes are soft and the moisture is steaming away. Add the chopped rosemary and a little table salt.

Tomatoes are beginning to sweat and reduce.

Cook until about half the tomato juice has evaporated and then add to the rest of the ingredients. Turn the heat to medium high. If you're using smoked salt, add it now and be careful—it can overpower, especially the African blend that includes other spices.  Add the chopped basil at the last minute.

The finished ratatouille took about 35-40 minutes to prepare, not counting the time required to grow and harvest the ingredients. It is served with simple cucumber onion salad, Trader Joe's hot Italian sausage, grilled, and the ubiquitous (at our house) chipotle and creamy garlic dill sauces. 

The garden also provides food for the soul. I didn't get any bird pictures, but from my harvesting position I admired swarming swooping chattering avians plus other garden beauties.

Bird-planted sunflowers with lots of bees. 

Lovely cosmos, which self seeds all over the place.

Yellow zinnias with a fig "tree" behind.

Fifteen-feet tall sunflowers. I'm not kidding. 

Impressive weightlifting, if I do say so myself.