The wonder of browsing random YouTube cooking channels led me to this cool lass, Jen, who makes interesting food. If you don’t know about Just Eat Life yet, please go check out their Youtube Channel. Her recipes are relatively simple and her instructions are fun. What’s not to love? I have been drooling virtually over all her recipes but what really made my jaw drop was this Ratatouille Galette. All my favourite vegetables in shortcrust pastry, it just sounds like something Frank and I would inhale.

And you know me, I almost never stick to a recipe 100%. Yes I’m rebellious that way, but also I happen to like my pastry very much (adding almond meal is always going to improve the taste). She uses Goat cheese in her recipe and I couldn’t find any decent ones in my local supermarket (some iffy brand in cheap looking package..eurghh) so I thought cream cheese would work too. I added some tomato puree because I felt that this recipe needs a little bit of acidity to balance the taste (some lemon juice would work very well too I think). So here’s my take on the Ratatouille Galette.

Shortcrust Pastry
1 1/2 cups Plain Flour
1/2 cup Almond Meal
170g Butter (Kerrygold for me always)
30g Parmesan Cheese
1 teaspoon salt
3-4 tablespoons cold water

To make the pastry, place both flour, almond meal, salt in a large bowl, rub the butter cubes into the flour and stirring in the Parmesan cheese with sufficient cold water (3-4 tablespoons) to mix to a firm dough. Flatten to disc, wrapped in cling film and leave in fridge for 30 minutes.

Ratatouille Filling
1 medium Yellow Squash
1 medium Zucchini
1 medium Eggplant
1 large Red capsicum
1-2 medium Tomatoes
1 medium onion
Small bunch of parsley (roughly chopped)
2-3 garlic cloves (finely minced)
100g Cream Cheese
1 teaspoon Tomato Puree
1 egg for egg wash
olive oil
Salt & pepper

Cut all the vegetables into equal sizes (thin rounds). Marinate the Yellow squash, zucchini, eggplant and red capsicum in some olive oil, salt and pepper for at least 10 minutes.

Grill or pan fry all the vegetables until tender. Set aside to cool.

Meanwhile, mix the garlic, cream cheese and tomato puree together.

Roll out the pastry to about 13-14 in diameter (I didn’t really measure, it was just the same size as my mini lazy susan, hehe) Spread the cream cheese mixture on top, sparing about 2 inches around the edges.

Layer the vegetables in a circle.

Continue until all the middle bit has been filled, sprinkling the parsley bit by bit as you go. Then fold up the edges of the pastry over, making little ‘folds’ as you go. Until it looks like this:

At this point, you might be super impatient and want to send it to the oven straightaway. But that might give you one problem: pastry shrinkage. So send it to the freezer for about 15 minutes for all the ‘molecules’ to be locked in nicely. Then brush the pastry with the egg wash and bake for 20 minutes in 180C oven or until golden brown.

I know it’s super tempting to dig in straightaway, but like anything that’s just coming out of the oven, we need to give it time to rest a little (to set, so to speak). Then it’s time to try a slice!

I knew that this would be delicious, but I didn’t expect it to be so o-m-g I have to sing Hallelujah kind of amazing. The pastry was tasty, nutty with a hint of cheese, the cream cheese mixture was quite rich but had the tartness of the tomato puree to balance it up. The vegetables are silky and aromatic. Well let’s just say we finished the whole galette in one night. I’m sure even the most hardcore carnivore would enjoy this dish. Failing that, you can always sneak in a little bit of bacon. *wink*

Thank you Jen for sharing this beautiful recipe!

Follow Just eat life on facebook and instagram (@jeneatslife) too!

The next few recipes will be vegetarian because I’m going to be cutting out meat for a week or two. So stay tuned!