Ratatouille

Ingredients:

-All the vegetables

-Pot

-Cooker

Method:

I am afraid. If I look over my shoulder I can still see the pot containing the ratatouille on the oven. We stare at each other for a moment, our shared journey bonding us closer than brothers. I let out a gasp and flee the room.

It started off so simple, I’m a vegetarian, twenty-something bachelor who, if I’m being honest, perhaps needs to lose a pound or two. At the same time my modern playboy lifestyle doesn’t leave me with much time to spend in the kitchen putting together culinary delights. I need healthy but I also need it quick and, if possible, tasty. A good friend recommended that I simply make a weeks’ worth of food in one go, the recipe she suggested - ratatouille.

I’m a bit hazy on the exact details but it seemed to begin well. I chopped onions, I crushed garlic; it was the very model of suburban bliss. It was when I went to turn on the cooker that I realised something was terribly wrong. I knew, I knew, that the recipe called for two courgettes but as I looked down at the chopping board I realised that I had actually chopped up eight, preparing not just my courgettes but all my flatmates’ as well. It sounds impossible but as I glanced around the room I saw, to my growing distress, that every vegetable contained in the house and been neatly sliced, ready to cook.

Had I been possessed by some by some demonic version of Yotam Ottolenghi? What dark vegetarian deeds were taking place in my kitchen? Like a puppet, forced into life by some unseen hand I grasped the pot slammed it down over the flames and began throwing in the vegetables with reckless abandon.

It was when I cast the sixth aubergine in the depths of the pot that I first noticed the insane laughter and ten peppers later before I grasped that it originated from my own lips. At this point I remember only brief moments of what transpired, the entire experience seems more like a dream now or perhaps it would be more apt to say nightmare.

I seem to recall distorted faces at the window urging me to add more paprika to the forbidden mixture and the burns force me to acknowledge that as the wooden spoon broke I did indeed, in a fit of madness, plunge my arm into the boiling mix and stir the abomination with my own hand.

As sit on the floor of my room my composure breaks and I let out a sob.

Tomorrow I shall order pizza.

Serve with 80g of pasta