Remy's Ratatouille

Remy's Ratatouille

Written by: Christine | August 10, 2022

Want a fun way to help your kids want to eat their veggies? We watched Ratatouille with our 3 year old and told him we were going to recreate Remy's star dish! It was easy and delicious! He ate zucchini and eggplant happily!

We used a mandolin for thin consistent slices but that is not safe for little hands.

Ingredients

1 C. Tomato Sauce (homemade or your favorite store bought)

1 TBSP minced garlic (approx. 3 cloves)

1 Eggplant

1 Zucchini

1 Red Bell Pepper

1 Yellow or orange bell pepper

1 large tomato

1 Large potato

1 Sweet potato

3/4 C. Bechamel Sauce

*special equipment-mandolin and parchment paper

Preheat oven at 375 degrees. Make bechamel sauce (directions below). Clean all veggies. Peel the potatoes and slice with mandolin. Bring pot of water to a boil. Season with salt. Boil white potato for 2-3 minutes. Remove with slotted spoon. Boil sweet slices for 2 minutes and remove with slotted spoon. While the potatoes cool mandolin the zucchini and eggplant. Using a knife and cutting board slice tomato and peppers into thin slices.

Spoon about ¾ of the tomato sauce into a baking dish. Spoon and swirl ½ cup of the bechamel in. Sprinkle garlic over the mixture. Season with salt and pepper. If you like, now you can sprinkle your favorite herbs (oregano, thyme, basil etc. thinly chopped).

Make stacks of veggies then turn and fan out into the dish creating a swirling pattern until all the space is filled. If it is difficult to include the peppers in stacks, leave them out and squeeze in after you have your swirls fanned out.

Drizzle the remaining tomato sauce and bechamel sauce on top. You can sprinkle additional salt and pepper and even parmesan on top.

Cut a piece of parchment paper the same size as the top of your dish. Cover the dish with the parchment.

Bake for about 45-50 minutes until the sauce is bubbling and the veggies are tender. You want to let this cool for several minutes, so it holds together when you serve it. Don’t forget to spoon some sauce over your serving when you plate your dish!

 

For the bechamel:

1 TBSP. butter

1 TBSP. flour

1 C.  warm milk

2 TBSP. grated parmesan cheese

Salt and pepper

Dash of nutmeg

 

Heat butter in a saucepan. Add 1 tbsp flour and cook 1-2 minutes until it is combined and smells slightly nutty. You do not want to burn the butter; it should not start to darken much. If it does, start over.  Add warm milk slowly and stir well. Cook until sauce thickens and coat back of a spoon. Add parmesan and stir until it melts into the sauce. Season with salt, nutmeg, and black pepper. 

You can make this even simpler by substituting store bought marina and alfredo sauce if you like! We challenged our littles to make the tallest veggie stacks then fanned them out in the dish.  We talked about scents, flavors, colors and counted the layers in our stacks. We even made patterns with the veggies! Fun, tasty and educational!