Vegan sauced sweet potato and plantain - Ratatouille
Recipe Name: Ratatouille
Subtitle: Sweet potatoes and plantains in tomato sauce.
Country: France
Preparation time: 1 hour
Recipe story:
Ratatouille is a dish that originated from France, but this recipe has some serious Nigerian infusions! A wonderful vegan African recipe, packed with sweet potatoes and plantains, nicely coated in a rich tomato sauce. It is filling and it’s very delicious.
Ingredients:
· 1 small narrow sweet potato (peeled; thinly sliced)
· 1 plantain (thinly sliced)
· 1-2 small tomato (thinly sliced)
· 1 small red onion (thinly sliced)
For the red sauce
· 2 tomatoes (chopped)
· 1 red bell pepper
· 2 cloves garlic
· 1 tbsp olive oil
· 1 tbsp tomato paste
· ½ small red onion (finely chopped)
· Dried thyme
· Curry powder
· Salt to taste
Directions:
Blanch the sweet potatoes slices in a pot of boiling water for 5 minutes. Drain and set aside with the rest of your thinly sliced vegetables.
To make the red sauce, blend the tomatoes, red bell pepper and garlic until you have a thick, chunky sauce consistency.
Heat some olive oil in a saucepan and add the red sauce, chopped red onion, tomato paste and a generous pinch of dried thyme and curry powder. Season to taste. Simmer for 5 minutes.
Grab a small oven dish and spread about ¾ of the red sauce over the base. Arrange the vegetables slices in an alternating and overlapping pattern all the way around the dish, working your way around the edge and into the center. Take the remaining red sauce and spoon that over the top of the vegetable.
Cut out greaseproof paper to match the shape and circumference of your dish and use it cover the entire arrangement.
Bake in a preheated oven, gas’s mark 6, for 25 minutes until everything is cooked and tender. Peel off the greaseproof paper and bake for another 5 minutes just to add some color to the top.
Serve on its own with sauce drizzled around the plate and extra thyme to garnish, serve with few slices of whole grain bread.
