Roasted Ratatouille

Hello, readers! I'm feeling kind of bad because I haven't been doing much posting. Truth is, with the abundant harvest from our garden and CSA paired with the super hot temps, I haven't been doing a lot of cooking. We've simply been enjoying the fresh produce straight from the earth - yum yum! This one, however, is an awesome dish when you care to taste some of that summer harvest cooked up.

Roasted Ratatouille

Ingredients:
-1 eggplant, chopped
-1 zucchini, chopped
-2 large tomatoes, chopped
-1 sweet onion, chopped
-1 red pepper, chopped
-1 green pepper, chopped*
-head of garlic, minced
-olive oil
-Small cut pasta
-Marinara**

1. Preheat oven to 450.
2. Toss all chopped veggies in a large bowl with garlic and olive oil until coated.
3. Spread coated veggies on a rimmed baking sheet and roast for about 22 minutes.
4. Meanwhile, boil pasta to desired tenderness, and once done mix the cooked pasta with the marinara.
5. To serve, mix pasta & sauce with roasted veggies and top with fresh basil and parmesan cheese.

*If you want to add some heat to this dish, you could use a chile pepper instead. I'm not able to do that since my kiddos won't go for it. I used an Italian Frying Pepper we got from our CSA this week.

**There are lots of ways to achieve this... You can make your own from scratch (my personal favorite recipe for doing so will be forthcoming once our tomato harvest is in full swing!), you could buy the jarred version at the store, or when you realize you have neither of those available, you can mix in 1 can of diced tomatoes and 1/2 can of tomato sauce.

Grilled ratatouille? As I was completing dinner my husband walked through the kitchen and said to me, why didn't we grill these instead of turning on the oven? Great question. Grilled ratatouille would be equally delicious. You could skewer the veggies, baste them olive oil and garlic, then serve as noted above. Next time...