Hello everyone and welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook!
This week, I’m focusing in on the somewhat divisive fruit, zucchini. Some love, some hate it. I’m in the former category and eat a lot of it when it’s in season. In my last post, I gave some fun nutritional facts about the fruit and shared my recipe for zucchini boats.
Today, I’m featuring a recipe for ratatouille.
Show of hands–who loved the Disney-Pixar movie, “Ratatouille?” I love it so much that I own it and have to watch it about once a year. The movie speaks to my love of cooking and also to my love of Paris and France, in general. I particularly love the French preoccupation, bordering on maniacal, obsession with food and wine. They just think and talk about food and wine ALL THE TIME. I can relate 😉
The first time I ever had ratatouille was in the home of a very elegant, gracious and truly proper Texas “gentlelady.” She served our wine in the family heritage crystal and served our food on the family heritage china. I don’t remember the main course, but the side dish was ratatouille, which she pronounced “rat-a-tu-ly.” She said she liked it either hot or cold, didn’t matter, but that night, she served it hot. It was rich, savory, salty and had a pleasant sweetness to it. I loved it and wanted to recreate it immediately. I’m sure I was too shy to ask for the recipe. And that probably didn’t matter, since I don’t think ratatouille is ever the same twice.
Ratatouille is a Provincial dish that seems to have originated in Nice…although I’m sure there’s debate about that. Anyway, it’s basically vegetable stew and generally includes onions, tomatoes, garlic, zucchini, eggplant, bell peppers, sweet basil and Herbs de Provence. But really, variations on it abound. And in a French household, ratatouille is made with whatever vegetables are on hand at the end of the week that need to be used up. I’m going to say that it probably usually includes tomatoes because it needs sauce of some kind. And it almost always includes a fair amount of zucchini, which is why I’m including it in this week’s ode to zucchinis 🙂
The recipe I include in this post is a basic template that makes a lot of a pretty traditional ratatouille. But you should play with this recipe–use whatever’s in your fridge, plus some tomatoes, and come up with your own favorite version of this venerated French classic!
Incidentally, the ratatouille that Remy made in the movie was actually more of a vegetable “tian,” or “confit byaldi.” I made my own ode to that beautiful dish here:
It’s basically just the tomato sauce on the bottom of the dish, with the sliced vegetables layered in concentric circles on top. I prefer the traditional, actually. This is really just my tribute to Remy.
I hope you enjoy the ratatouille! Tune in tomorrow for more fun with zucchini!
Until then,
Peace, love and good food,
Keri
