Ratatouille

Our household loves a bit of 'rat' as we call it. It's an excellent way to painlessly boost everyone's veggie intake, leftovers can be eaten cold or reheated for lunch and it's dead simple. What's not to love?

Like much of my cooking, the 'recipe' is quite free-range, but I"m sure you'll get the drift, catch what I'm throwing or even smell what I'm cooking!

Here goes:

Chop the following into similar sized pieces (helps them cook evenly)

• 4 mid-sized eggplants 
• About 4 zucchini
• About 4 red capsicums
• Button mushrooms (or not if you don't like mushrooms)
• 3 or 4 onions - I quite like the red Spanish ones for this but brown will do as well
• You can also throw in some rosemary sprigs and cracked black pepper (I don't use salt)

I try and keep everything touching the baking dish's base and give the pieces some space so they get well roasted, browned and a bit crispy, so spread them over two trays. If they're too crowded they can steam and be a bit soggy. 

Douse liberally with olive oil and throw in the over at 180C; fan forced if you're in a hurry. After about half an hour, give them a toss to get the other side browned. I actually don't know how long it take but allow an hour and just look at them when you think to!

The veggies all shrink a bit so once they're done you can throw them all into one dish. Add a couple of cans of chopped tomatoes and torn fresh basil or oregano leaves if you like them and they're around. I add black olives and occasionally even some capers if I'm feeling so inclined. These all give plenty of saltiness so you probably don't need to add any. (You can add feta to the cold leftovers for lunch too, which is pretty yum.)

Throw it back into the oven to get it hot again (the tomatoes cool it down) and it's ready to go!

Have it with steak, baked chicken breast, salmon - even snags, You could serve some green beans as well if you wanted - and dinner's done!

Roast Veg Salad & Easy Fruit Pudding

This one is delicious! Again, sorry about the photo - I've had to crop it from the big one.

• Roast small cubes of pumpkin and Spanish onions with olive oil until caramelised (you could also add sweet potato, parsnip, beetroot or other faves - just not potato)  add the seeds from the pumpkin too - they're yum roasted
• Dress some rocket with lemon scented olive oil and black pepper (no salt needed as the feta has plenty). Pile it onto a platter
• Layer on the veggies, loads of feta and toasted pine nuts (just do them in a heavy pan on the stove top - no need to add oil - just dry roast)

There was none of this salad left.

After the fridge incident, I also found quite a lot of pureed fijoa and banana (a surprisingly delicious combo) so I made a really simple, hot sponge to go the top and served with cream and ice cream.

• Spread the fruit (you can really use anything - as long as it's cooked and ready to go) in the bottom of a baking dish - make sure it's a good depth (the fruit, not the dish!)
• Cream 150g butter with a cup of sugar
• Whisk in 2 eggs (one at a time)
• Fold in 1 1/2 cups flour and 2 tsps baking powder (probably should sift it if you can be bothered) along with 1/2 to 3/4 cup milk (alternate milk and flour until all the flour is in and you have a mixture about as thick as wall paper paste)
• Blob it over the fruit and whack in a preheated over at 180C until it looks like this.....yum!!!