Reflections on Ratatouille

My last guessing game was indeed pretty easy, and everybody came up with the correct answer: ratatouille. Thanks to Alison for her horror story about bad ratatouille; now listen here to how to make it great.

For anybody who doesn't know about ratatouille, it is a Southern French vegetable dish made of eggplant, zucchini, bell peppers and tomatoes. I used to make a rather mediocre ratatouille with the recipe from "Les Recettes Faciles" by Françoise Bernard. Her book is one of my French cooking bibles, but some of the recipes are a little TOO facile. In her version, everything is sautéed and simmered together. As Alison pointed out in her comment, the secret to good ratatouille is to sauté everything separately.

There's only so much sautéing everything separately I can take, though: that's why I love the ratatouille recipe from Roger Vergé's excellent cookbook Les Légumes de Mon Moulin. I don't really follow the quantities, but I love his method.

While you sauté your onion, garlic and bell peppers together, you bake your zucchini and eggplant on two separate baking sheets, after drizzling them with some olive oil, until they are tender. Then you throw everything into a covered baking dish, adding the fresh tomatoes at this time, and bake it for about 30 minutes at 150°c (300°F).

For novices, here's a basic ratatouille recipe -- but apply the Vergé method to the cooking instructions.

I like to make a lot of ratatouille because it freezes well or can be the base for a number of other dishes: quiches, vegetable tarts, gratins, or terrines. It is also good served lukewarm or cold.

This time my leftovers went into a savory "clafouti." My clafouti guide, Les Clafoutis de Christophe, doesn't have a specific recipe for "ratatouille clafouti" but I used the basic recipe -- with modifications, as usual -- for his bell pepper and tomato clafouti.

Most people know clafouti as a fruit dessert, but vegetable versions make great evening suppers, or can be served elegantly as starters in individual dishes.

Summer vegetables are still around, so if you haven't made ratatouille yet this season, there's still time!