Recipes that work

I was recently watching the animated film 'Ratatouille' with my son. The film is about a mouse interested in French cuisine. The mouse dreams of becoming a chef and ends up fulfilling it. The story shows us how the mouse can follow a recipe but also use some of its imagination to alter the recipe to make it its own.

One of the dishes the mouse cooks at the end of the film is the famous 'ratatouille', a traditional Provincial dish. I got really interested in the dish itself and looked up the real recipe for ratatouille on the net. There are many different alternatives to follow. None of the pictures on the pages I visited presented the dish in the same way as the mouse in the film. I found out that ratatouille is actually a very complicated dish consisting of very simple ingredients. After having done my research, I tried to recreate Ratatouille's ratatouille dish á la Marianna :)

With a little improvisation and common sense plus some tips from the animated film itself I created the dish. To my surprise it looked and tasted great and it was not as time consuming as a real ratatouille dish. Here is my result:

Before baking 

After baking

But it not just Ratatouille-the film which inspires me to try new things and add my own twist. Great Chefs like  Gordon Ramsay, Chuck Hughes and Jamie Oliver have been an inspiration. I mostly follow their recipes without changing a thing but sometimes there is space for improvisation. Some of the best recipes I have tried from these great chefs are Chuck's homemade Chicken Nuggets, Jamie's Chicken-bacon skewers and Gordon's basic lasagna. I tried Gordon's lasagna recipe which I followed word for word and this is the result:

Lasagna

No matter if you follow a recipe word for word or you decide to add your own personal twist always remember to make it fun! Also, try recipes which will work for the whole family and can be cooked again and again. All three recipes mentioned above are ones I tried and have, since then, cooked many times :D