Last week, I had made a
ratatouille pizza, and that had only used about half of each vegetable. I sort of forgot about the two tomatoes, half a zucch, half an eggplant, and three tomatillos languishing in the bottom of my fridge when I went to buy new veggies this week, so first order of business was to use these poor guys up. The fridge runs too cold, and I have the bottom shelf, so all my veggies tend to get too cold. This meant that the tomatillos and tomatoes were not very happy, the only way to eat them and enjoy them would be if they were cooked down.
My delicious heirloom tomatoes and peaches are not being stored in the fridge. Learned that lesson.
Anyway, I wanted to use some of the potatoes I'd gotten, and potatoes taste best with lots of fat and salt, so I decided to fry them, in slices, with some onion and the two links of sausage that I had living in the freezer. Quite delicious. The ratatouille stew gloop was a sort of side dish to that.
Its been cold enough at night recently that a good, hearty, greasy meal was just the thing. I should probably limit these sorts of meals in the near future, since I'm on a sort of limited amount of training due to a knee injury... but whatevs, olive oil is good for you.
I had half a purple potato dying a slow death in the fridge along with those ratatouille veggies, so I fried that one up too. That's the random blue thing in with the other potatoes.
Pan-fried potatoesMade enough for two mealsA couple handfuls of small red potatoes
Olive oil
Kosher salt
1/2 onion
Wash the potatoes, then slice them into ~1/4" slices. Put a decent amount of oil into a fairly wide, flat-bottomed frying pan, and heat that up to medium-low-ish. Once the oil is shimmering, put down the potato slices, as many as will fit in one layer, and sprinkle with salt. You'll probably be doing a couple batches, I did three.
As those cook on the first side, finely dice the onion.
After about 5 minutes, check the bottom of one of the potato slices. If it is golden brown, or has brown spots, flip the potatoes. If it is just white, leave them cooking. Once the bottoms are golden brown, flip over all the potato slices. Once you've flipped them, add about a third of the onion to the interstitial spaces so its touching the pan. Make sure there is still enough oil in the pan to keep things sizzling. Once the other side is golden brown, the taters are done.
Repeat this process as many times as you need to to finish cooking the rest of the potatoes. Enjoy!
Ratatouille stewMade enough for three meals as a side*Note*
This is a recipe that is using up old veggies. For god's sake, don't go following it to the exact letter - be creative and use up your own veggies. Or use these veggies and use the whole thing, rather than half. The eggplant and tomatoes are what give it the gloopy-stewyness.
1/2 eggplant
1/2 zucchini
1/4 summer squash
2 tomatoes
3 tomatillos
1 small round hot red pepper
1 orange-y green pepper
1/2 onion (the other half got used in the potatoes)
kosher salt
olive oil
dried thyme leaves (rosemary would have been better), any dried herbs work.
Put some oil in a frying pan. Dice the onion. Sweat the onion with some salt, then add the peppers. Chop everything else, put it in the pan. Put a lid on the frying pan and let it cook down for 10 minutes or so, stirring occasionally and tasting too, for salt and other herbs. Once it looks pretty gloopy and stew-like, you're done. Enjoy with bread, or as a side dish, or on pasta, or on rice, or on potatoes... you get the idea.
The sausage links, I just fried in the pan, flipping every once in a while.
The layering was: Pulled pork, beans, greek yogurt (tastes like sour cream, but better!), cilantro, tomatoes, avocado, corn, salt. 
