I've heard that there are certain ingredients that should never go into an authentic ratatouille, but I can never remember what they are. And in any case, it's still a summer vegetable stew, whether or not it includes forbidden ingredients, and whether or not you give it a fancy French name. In my book, if it has eggplants and tomatoes and is thickly fragrant and would be equally perfect hotly served soaking into a hunk of brown bread with cheese melting on top, or cold in a lunchbox with rice and chickpeas in their own separate containers (my plan for the coming week), it's ratatouille. It's been a long time since I made it, but with all these lovely vegetables fresh from Kawakami Farm (all except the zucchini, that is), I was inspired.
What really sparked the idea was that the tomatoes in my vegetable delivery box arrived a bit battered, their skins split and their flesh too tender to withstand the dull blade of my old kitchen knife. If I had tried to put them in salad, they would have turned it into soup. The only thing to do with them was a stew, and fortunately almost all the other ingredients were there with them in the box.
This is a very easy stew to make, requiring nothing but a bit of chopping vegetables into big hunks and stirring occasionally as they cook down. I started by coating the bottom of my cast iron Le Creuset pot (the better to make authentic ratatouille, bien sur!) with olive oil (the regular store-bought kind, not the fancy cold-pressed biologique kind from Lucca). I smashed up all the cloves from one of the mini-heads of garlic I got in a previous Kawakami Farm box, and sizzled them around in the oil until they started to smell good, then dumped in all three chopped up eggplants and stirred until most of the pieces had at least sucked up a sip of oil. Then I let them sit for a minute while I chopped up the zucchini into similarly sized chunks and stirred again. I rinsed my three tomatoes and squeezed them in by hand, using the knife to cut down the bigger hunks of skin that were left after the juicy insides had all gone into the pot.
It's important not to add any extra water, as these are all quite watery vegetables, and as you can see, they release plenty of liquid. If they seem to be browning to fast at the beginning, it's better to take them off the heat or turn it down than to put any water in. You don't want them to get mushy, after all - they should cook all the way down without losing their shape completely, and with just they juice they produce themselves, it takes about fifteen minutes or so to reduce from soup to stew. I added some salt after the tomatoes went in, then left it alone while I chopped up the peppers. I don't like the way peppers get bitter when they cook too long, and I think they should retain some crunch, so I always stir them in very last thing, and leave them on the heat for only about five minutes.
Here's what it looks like when it's done - peppers in, adding color and crunch; liquid reduced to just a thick tomato sauce; eggplants and zucchini still in recognizable chunks. It may not be authentic ratatouille, but it looks pretty good nevertheless.
I've heard that there are certain ingredients that should never go into an authentic ratatouille, but I can never remember what they are. And in any case, it's still a summer vegetable stew, whether or not it includes forbidden ingredients, and whether or not you give it a fancy French name. In my book, if it has eggplants and tomatoes and is thickly fragrant and would be equally perfect hotly served soaking into a hunk of brown bread with cheese melting on top, or cold in a lunchbox with rice and chickpeas in their own separate containers (my plan for the coming week), it's ratatouille. It's been a long time since I made it, but with all these lovely vegetables fresh from Kawakami Farm (all except the zucchini, that is), I was inspired.
What really sparked the idea was that the tomatoes in my vegetable delivery box arrived a bit battered, their skins split and their flesh too tender to withstand the dull blade of my old kitchen knife. If I had tried to put them in salad, they would have turned it into soup. The only thing to do with them was a stew, and fortunately almost all the other ingredients were there with them in the box.
This is a very easy stew to make, requiring nothing but a bit of chopping vegetables into big hunks and stirring occasionally as they cook down. I started by coating the bottom of my cast iron Le Creuset pot (the better to make authentic ratatouille, bien sur!) with olive oil (the regular store-bought kind, not the fancy cold-pressed biologique kind from Lucca). I smashed up all the cloves from one of the mini-heads of garlic I got in a previous Kawakami Farm box, and sizzled them around in the oil until they started to smell good, then dumped in all three chopped up eggplants and stirred until most of the pieces had at least sucked up a sip of oil. Then I let them sit for a minute while I chopped up the zucchini into similarly sized chunks and stirred again. I rinsed my three tomatoes and squeezed them in by hand, using the knife to cut down the bigger hunks of skin that were left after the juicy insides had all gone into the pot.
It's important not to add any extra water, as these are all quite watery vegetables, and as you can see, they release plenty of liquid. If they seem to be browning to fast at the beginning, it's better to take them off the heat or turn it down than to put any water in. You don't want them to get mushy, after all - they should cook all the way down without losing their shape completely, and with just they juice they produce themselves, it takes about fifteen minutes or so to reduce from soup to stew. I added some salt after the tomatoes went in, then left it alone while I chopped up the peppers. I don't like the way peppers get bitter when they cook too long, and I think they should retain some crunch, so I always stir them in very last thing, and leave them on the heat for only about five minutes.
Here's what it looks like when it's done - peppers in, adding color and crunch; liquid reduced to just a thick tomato sauce; eggplants and zucchini still in recognizable chunks. It may not be authentic ratatouille, but it looks pretty good nevertheless.
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