I love French country food and one of my favorites is ratatouille.

And I really love it with this combination Tthat happens to be a Bordeaux blend.

Now I have about a 12 inch pan here that I'm going to just make some sauce in.

Then I'm gonna line it with lots of vegetables so you don't have to cook the sauce in advance at all.

So first thing I'm gonna do is to put in a 28 ounce can of crushed tomatoes.

Now always use crushed because if you use a chopped tomato in this, your sauce will be way too wet.

So the first thing we wanna do is chop up a couple of peppers, a red pepper and a yellow pepper.

So let's just cut that heart right out of it.

Now let's just add that to our sauce.

Then we'll add a nice yellow pepper.

And again, that nice soft flavor, it's just wonderful.

Okay, now let's take one onion.

And I like to use a relatively large onion for this because it has great flavor.

Now at this time, I'm going to add some great garlic because you have to have that wonderful garlic flavor and you want it all through your dish.

So garlic is really going to be one of those aromatics that pulls it all together in the sauce.

Because garlic is a little bit hard, you wanna make sure those pieces are nice and small.

And then the sweetness of the garlic really adds to the sauce.

Okay, let's plop that in.

And I love French herbs.

Basil, thyme, a little bit of parsley.

Just love that.

So I've minced some up here.

I've got about a quarter cup of fresh herbs, all minced together and it doesn't matter what combination.

You're just gonna throw those in and then we're gonna give it a stir.

So let's just stir that through.

Now remember, this is our wonderful sauce and it stays right here in the pan.

And then we'll put all of our other vegetables right over top.

First of all, I have a yellow squash.

So what I wanna do is just give about, oh an eighth of an inch slice, maybe 16th.

You don't want it too thick because it takes these vegetables a long time to roast when they're stacked, but we want to give some nice kinda thin slices, about like this.

Don't read through them.

Just a little more than that.

And then we're also going to take a green squash.

You wanna make sure that your vegetables are relatively the same size and then the eggplant.

And I love like to start at the bottom because it's just easier to hold onto the little end than it is to the bigger end as I slice.

Now, eggplant is one of those things you usually want to put a little salt on it to get the bitterness out if you're making some sort of an Italian dish.

But for this particular one, we don't need to worry about that.

Everything will be seasoned just right.

And the little bit of oil and herbs on top will just enhance that flavor.

Don't worry if you kind of slip on that because the way that we're going to stack this you won't see that you have half pieces of eggplant.

Now for the tomato I really wanna use a serrated knife and you're gonna use the whole tomato with the exception of the core.

And for this, I kinda like to give just slightly thicker slices because they're easier to lay out in your ratatouille.

Now let's layer this up and it's just a beauty when you get it done.

So I'm gonna take a squash and a zucchini and you can kind of see I'm fanning them out just a little bit.

And don't worry if your eggplant starts to turn yellow, that's normal.

It's oxidation and it's fine.

And then it's tomato just like this.

It's sort of like playing cards.

And then let's take another one and another and another.

(happy french violin music) So we have all of our vegetables all lined up and they're gorgeous.

I'm leaving just a little hole in the center so this can steam up.

And as I put the foil on, it will have the opportunity to steam those vegetables a little bit as they also bake.

So I wanna take some more of those herbs, another quarter cup of my chopped herbs and I have parsley, basil and a little bit of thyme.

And then I wanna take some olive oil and oh, maybe two tablespoons or so, and some salt and pepper.

And this is where I use that salt and pepper blend that I'm always talking about.

I have about half salt and half pepper and I'm gonna put in about a teaspoon.

So a half teaspoon salt, half teaspoon of pepper.

And if it feels too dry, if the herbs don't have any liquid on them put in a little more olive oil.

This will give our ratatouille that little extra herb flavor.

So I have a parchment disc here.

Now I'm going to cover the pan with aluminum foil but it's key when you have tomatoes to cover it first with parchment because the tomato acid will eat through the aluminum foil and you don't want that foil in your food.

So just take a layer or two of parchment and just kind of lay it on top, just like that.

And then let's cover it with foil.

(foil rustles) Okay, wrap it up tightly.

And then we're gonna pop this in a 400 degree oven for an hour.

This looks amazing and it smells even better.

So let's pour a little bit of this wonderful wine.

Now, this really works with the herbs.

It's just delightful with the herbs.

It also is really great with vegetables and vegetarian dishes as well as tremendous meat dishes.

So anytime you're looking for a great bottle of wine with a meat dish or vegetarian, go for something that's like a Bordeaux blend.

Mm oh, it smells heavenly.