Hearty vegetable and minced meat pan 'Ratatouille'

Ingredients for 4 servings:

• 400 g minced meat, preferably beef
• 1 large onion(s)
• 2 cloves garlic
• 2 red bell peppers
• 1 m.-large zucchini
• 200 g mushrooms, brown
• 1 pack of tomatoes, chopped
• ½ apple
• some cucumber(s), small sweet and sour
• Vinegar
• oil
• pepper
• Salt

Instructions

Working time approx. 30 minutes; Total time approx. 30 minutes

Spicy, sweet and sour with peppers, zucchini, mushrooms, apple and gherkins

Peel, halve, and chop the onion. Clean and deseed the bell peppers, remove the white pith, and cut into fairly large pieces. Quarter the zucchini and cut into appropriately sized slices. Clean and chop the mushrooms (halve, quarter, or sixth depending on their size). Halve, core, peel, and wedge the apple. Drain the gherkins and cut them into whole or half slices, depending on their size. Heat a pan and a casserole dish, add a little oil, and sauté half of the chopped onions and a crushed garlic clove each. Increase the heat to the pan, add the minced meat, season with salt and pepper, and fry until crumbly. At the same time, briefly sauté the bell peppers and zucchini in the casserole dish, deglaze with a splash of vinegar, and add the chopped tomatoes (I usually use al gusto arrabiata). Simmer for 5-10 minutes (depending on how crunchy you want the vegetables to be), then add the minced meat, mushrooms, and cucumber slices. Finally, slice the apple wedges again and add them. Simmer for a short while longer, seasoning to taste. If the mixture is still too solid/dry, you can spice it up with cucumber juice, ketchup, chili sauce, or something similar. It goes very well with rice and a green salad. If you have a very large casserole dish or are making the dish for fewer people, you don’t need a casserole dish. To do this, set the crumbly fried minced meat aside, prepare the vegetables in the casserole dish, and then add the minced meat back in. Otherwise, proceed as described above. Two more comments on the recipe: The vegetables can of course be varied; for us, the apple and cucumber pieces, as well as the basic sweet and sour flavor, were the special touch. And I’ve been cooking this recipe with different vegetables in my family for several decades, although we called it (not quite correctly) Ratatouille – hence the name in the title.