Last night I took the phrase “anyone can cook” literally and, for the first time ever, I made homemade ratatouille. For weeks my husband and I have been talking about how the only appropriate dish for the movie Ratatouille was, well, ratatouille. I was worried it wouldn’t taste good (spoiler alert, it does) and that my daughter wouldn’t like the movie Ratatouille, but it turned into a wonderful movie night!

Ratatouille is a really simple dish to make, just thinly sliced vegetables, tomato paste, olive oil and spices. You bake it and then serve it with some extra sauce and mascarpone cheese. It is really delicious! The most time consuming part is slicing the vegetables.

Below you will find the recipe that I used to make our ratatouille:

1 small eggplant, thinly sliced

1 zucchini, thinly sliced

1 yellow squash, thinly sliced

2 roma tomatoes, thinly sliced

4 tablespoons olive oil

1 can of tomato paste

tablespoon onion powder

1/4 cup minced garlic

3/4 cup water

salt and pepper to taste

1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves

3 tablespoons mascarpone cheese

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Mix tomato paste, water, onion powder, garlic, 1 tablespoon olive oil, salt and pepper. Spread tomato paste mixture on the bottom of a 10×10 inch baking pan. Arrange alternating slices of eggplant, zucchini, yellow squash and tomato, starting at the outer edge of the dish and working towards the center. Overlap the slices a little. Drizzle the remaining olive oil of the vegetables and season with salt and pepper. Sprinkle with thyme leaves. Cover vegetables with a piece of parchment paper cut to fit inside. Bake in oven for 45 minutes. Serve with mascarpone cheese.

My husband is a meat and potatoes sort of guy, so I ended up grilling some chicken to go along with our ratatouille. After we gobbled down our meal, it was time for dessert! I don’t know about you, but I LOVE French desserts, and narrowing it down was harder than I thought. We ended up having creme brulee and mini macaron cookies. They were the perfect way to end our dinner and movie.

My daughter loved the movie Ratatouille (and she also really loved the macarons) and we had so much fun trying a new dish that none of us had tried before. Leave a comment below and let me know which movie you think we should watch next Friday.

Sending love and magic.