The Muses of Happiness

Our summer garden this year blessed us with tomatoes of all kinds (no blight!).  We also had some green beans and some sugar snap peas, but the tomatoes were the star.  Thank goodness for our wonderful Saturday farmer’s market, which gave us zucchini, peppers, several types of garlic, and onions.  Just this week, I used the last of the tomatoes in a beef stew, but the recipe below was a hit from early September.  These last several months, I realized that it’s OK for me to do things “a little differently” from a recipe–as long as I trust my instincts about flavors that will go together and cook each component as it prefers to be prepared.  I suppose this is a bit like when I improvise musically…I never play an accompaniment the same way twice and you use the elements that come to you either from the basic musical idea or from the person you’re accompanying.  And you let your soul use what comes to you in that moment.

9/3/11–This evening’s variation on ratatouille is my “mostly one pan” method with the added kick of sun-dried tomatoes. I had checked in my Julia Child book and her recipe called for separate pans for the zucchini, the eggplant, and then baking it in the oven in a casserole dish.  Way too many dishes…and way too much time!

Since I cook almost everything in my 11″ iron frying pan, that’s where I made my ratatouille.  First, I sautéed a whole onion and several halved fresh garlic cloves, then added baby eggplants sliced (babies don’t need salting to get rid of extra fluid), about five of them.  At the same time, I sautéed the zucchini and blanched sun-dried tomatoes in my smaller 10″ iron pan.  Once the baby eggplant seemed soft enough, I added slices of purple pepper and heirloom tomato (one really large one).  I also poured the blanching juice into the larger pan for flavor and to get the garlic nice and soft.  Once the zucchini was to my liking, I put that in the larger pan and added some vegetable broth (I could have used chicken broth if I had some), then simmered covered for about 10 minutes on low heat.  In the last two minutes, I added some fresh cilantro parsley leaves.

It was served over brown and wild rice, with grated cheese, garlic scape bits for toppings and some home-made bread, fresh mozzarella and Dubliner cheese on the side.