Ratatouille

Serves 4 as a main dish, 8 as a side. Takes nearly an hour, but you can do other things in the meantime.

Ratatouille is basically a stew of all the late summer vegetable fruits. There are a variety of ways to cook it. Here's one variation:

medium eggplant, cut and prepared as below
1/2 large purple onion, diced (white/yellow is fine, but purple is a nice color in this)
4-6 cloves garlic, sliced
a little olive oil
1/2t marjoram
1/4C sherry
medium zucchini, quartered lengthwise and sliced 1/2" across
1/2 sweet green pepper
12 oz canned crushed tomatoes
water as necessary

Take the eggplant and cut it in half lengthwise, leaving on the cap. Cut each side in half parallel to the cut. Lay the flat side down on the cutting board and cut in 1/2" or so slices from the base of the cap to the blossom end. Starting at the blossom end, cut in 1/2" slices, producing a sort of big dice. Discard cap. The cap helps keep the eggplant together which you cut it, and makes the work faster!

Put the eggplant in a colander, and sprinkle liberally with salt, and toss. Leave for about 15 minutes while you do other things. Take your hands and squish the living daylights out of the eggplant, leaving it translucent and flaccid. You'll produce a lot of brownish bitter liquid which is why many people don't like italian eggplant. Very little salt remains in the eggplant, so don't worry about using 1/4 C or so. If you want to skip this stage, use the equivalent in Japanese Eggplants, diced, maybe 3 or so. Slender Japanese eggplants don't have the bitter undertone of the standard large Italian eggplant, but lack a certain depth for this dish in my opinion. Leave eggplant while you saute other veggies, thus:

Onion, garlic and oil in large pan over med flame until soft. Give the eggplant a final wringing out, rinse briefly, and add it to the pan. Add marjoram, sherry, zucchini and green pepper and eggplant. Toss to distribute juices, and then pour in crushed tomatoes.

Reduce flame, and simmer for about 30 minutes, adding only enough water to the pan to prevent sticking.