Grilled Ratatouile

This is a great healthy summer meal that is perfect for hot days when you do not want to heat up the kitchen. It comes from the Cuisine at home magazine which I can not recommend enough.

Ingredients:

You can sub in any veggies you prefer or have on hand, we used pipian squash instead of zucchini.

1 Japanese eggplant - halved lengthwise - you can use regular if that is all you've got
1 red bell pepper - seeded and quartered
1 red onion - cut into 1/2 inch thick rounds
1 tomato - halved and seeded
1/2 zucchini - cut lengthwise
1/2 yellow squash - cut lengthwise
3 TBS olive oil
2 tsp fresh chopped thyme - I used dried
2 tsp fresh lemon juice
1 tsp minced lemon zest


1. Preheat grill to medium.
2. Toss all of the veggies in 2TBS of olive oil and salt and pepper.
3. Grill vegetables covered until tender, ~ 3 minutes each side depending on how soft you like them.  We prefer them with a little crunch left.
4.  Chop all vegetables except for the tomato into bite size pieces and place in large bowl.
5. Puree tomato with 1 TBS olive oil, thyme, lemon juice and zest until smooth.
6.  Toss the veggies in the tomato puree.
7. Salt and pepper to taste.

We served our veggies over a light summer orzo pasta salad and topped it all off with mozzarella cheese.  The recipe suggest putting it on a creamy goat cheese orzo that I haven't tried yet.