Ratatouille.

Ever since the movie Ratatouille came out, I have been dying to try to cook that colorful and delicious looking dish.  Two weeks ago, a friend of ours gave us a HUGE zucchini and I thought what better to do than make some ratatouille.  I gave it a try tonight, and it was fantastic.  So, here it is:

1/2 onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, very thinly sliced
10oz tomato puree
4 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 small eggplant
1 smallish zucchini
1 smallish yellow squash
1 longish red bell pepper
Few sprigs fresh thyme
Salt and pepper
1/2 lemon



Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Pour tomato puree into bottom of an oval baking dish, approximately 10 inches across the long way. Drop the sliced garlic cloves and chopped onion into the sauce, stir in two tablespoons of the olive oil and season the sauce generously with salt and pepper.

Trim the ends off the eggplant, zucchini and yellow squash. Carefully, trim the ends off the red pepper and remove the core, leaving the edges intact, like a tube.  Cut the eggplant, zucchini, squash, and red pepper into thin slices.

Atop the tomato sauce, arrange slices of prepared vegetables from the outer edge to the inside of the baking dish, overlapping so just a little bit of each flat surface is visible, alternating vegetables. It's okay if you have leftover vegetables.

Drizzle the remaining two tablespoons of olive oil over the vegetables and season them generously with salt and pepper. Remove the leaves from the thyme sprigs.  Sprinkle the fresh thyme over the dish.  Squeeze lemon half over vegetables.

Cover dish with a piece of parchment paper. Cut to fit inside.

Bake for approximately 45 to 55 minutes, until vegetables have released their liquid and are clearly cooked, but with some structure left so they are not totally limp. They should not be brown at the edges, and you should see that the tomato sauce is bubbling up around them.

Serve on cous cous.  and of course, enjoy!