Ratatouille

Place a medium sized pan of water on to boil, core and score the bottom of your tomatoes whilst you wait for this to heat up

Blanch the tomatoes for 10-15 seconds or until the skin starts to peel off, then remove and place then straight into ice water, remove from the ice water once cool

Remove the skin and seeds of the tomatoes and finely dice, put to one side

You can substitute steps 1-3 and use two cans of tinned tomatoes instead, I prefer the cherry ones they seem to be sweeter!

Dice your brown onion, green capsicum, roasted red peppers and garlic

In a pan on a low heat, add your extra virgin olive oil, along with the onion, a generous pinch of salt, followed by your bay leaf and thyme

Cook the onion until soft but without colour, then add in your green capsicum

Cook out the capsicum until soft, then add your tomatoes and cook out for another five minutes

Finally add your roasted red peppers (strained) and continue to cook for another five minutes

Remove the thyme and bay leaf and blitz the sauce until you have a thick paste,if too thick you can add more olive oil when blitzing

Pass this through a sieve and season to taste

Next slice all of your vegetables thinly enough so they can bend without snapping, you can use a knife instead of a mandoline, or if your food processer has a blade attachment for slicing this will work perfectly

Preheat your oven to 180 celcius fan

Season all of your sliced vegetables with olive oil and salt, stack them identically if you're feeling super fancy and you have all the time in the world, otherwise random is fine

Pour your sauce into the bottom of the pan and add in your vegetables, make sure to slice enough as I had to do loads more, but this recipe is correct!

Season again with olive oil, salt, and cook in the oven for 40 minutes, taste one piece of the eggplant as this will have the toughest skin and take the longest, if ready, remove and leave on the side for ten monutes before serving