Facile Friday - Root-tootouille

I love veggies but there are certain ones that I love more than others.  Eggplant is ok but not my favorite, so what to do when a recipe calls for for a vegetable that you are not in love with?

Ratatouille is a yummy dish but I have never been fond of the eggplant that sits quietly among the squashes. I wanted to make a ratatouille for our family's holiday celebration but I really didn't want to make it with eggplant.  I tried to think of the veggies that I love best and are generally more popular than others and I ended up with: beets, carrots, parsnips and turnips.  I have used these vegetables when I roasted them and glazed them with a honey soy and it was a big hit.  How could I go wrong?
 
Now to turn them into a ratatouille.  A beautiful presentation would be to recreate the movie version where that oh so talented rat did a wonderful job of redesigning the dish to make it lovely.  I think I saw that movie 1000 times when my son was younger.  OK, so I was going to slice the veggies and layer them in a pan in a stylish way.  Now, what pan?  I have a huge, deep cast iron that I love.  It is one of those big old fryer pans that makes fried chicken so good you want to slap your mama!  They aren't kidding when they say that it is all in the pan you use.

First I thin sliced and par boiled the beets in one pan, so as not to pinkify all of the other folks at the party.  Then I did the same to the rest of the vegetables.  I greased my pan and added a thin layer of italian seasoned diced tomatoes to the bottom of my cast iron pan.  Starting at the center, I layered the par cooked vegetables in a circular pattern till I ran out of room or I ate too many of the slices. Then I topped it with more of the seasoned tomatoes. 

I called in the workers I needed to help me carry the pan to the oven....I didn't really need contracted workers but it is one of the times that I wish I had some....that pan weighed a ton!  Into the oven it went for about 50 minutes.  The house smelled so good!  I really love the smell of parsnips.  When all was said and done THIS is what I ended up with.

The holiday feast created NO LEFTOVERS of the root-tootouille!  Hooray!  I had eaten my fill and was happy that I wouldn't have to be eating it for the next week.  My opinion on this is that I actually like it better than the original with the squashes and that blasted eggplant.  Definately give this one a try.  You can print the recipe below or find it on the recipe page.


Print Root-tootouille Recipe

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