Ratatouille is saucy and versatile – and easy to make.Julie Van Rosendaal/The Globe and Mail
There is perhaps no dish – certainly no humble amalgamation of vegetables – as popularized by a movie as ratatouille.
The classic French stew is an excellent way to manage so much of what’s in season right now: tomatoes, summer squash such as zucchini and pattypan, sweet peppers, onions, garlic, eggplant. There are as many versions of the dish as there are people making it. In the movie, our rat chef hero prepares a beautifully arranged plate of paper-thin slices of tomato, zucchini and eggplant, but ratatouille can be as simple as chopping and tossing everything into a pot and cooking it until it looks like stew.
There is no correct way to make ratatouille, but there is an easy way. Put everything into a pot and cook until it’s saucy and bubbly, then cool and put it into the fridge if you have the time – like most stews, it will improve after a day or three. As ratatouille contains plenty of moisture and the veggies have broken down by the long cooking process, it’s an excellent candidate for freezing – the condensed stew takes up far less space than fresh veggies, and the texture remains the same once it has thawed.
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However you prepare it, ratatouille has loads of fibre and is delicious on pasta or spooned over toast. You could simmer eggs or fish in it, serve it alongside roasted meats, pile it into (or onto) a sandwich (grilled cheese!), or add stock to make soup. It is the perfect fall dish and gives you all kinds of options down the road.
Ratatouille
There is no requirement to measure anything here – start with a big onion, then use what you have, what you like or what is getting wrinkly and needs to be cooked. If you’d like some heat, include a jalapeno or other hot pepper or two. Use olive or your favourite vegetable oil, or even butter – the moisture from the vegetables will prevent it from burning. If you’d like a more condensed tomato ratatouille, add some tomato purée or a can of tomato paste as well. Some people season theirs with a glug of red wine or balsamic vinegar.
- Olive or other vegetable oil, or butter (any kind of fat you cook with)
- 1 large onion, peeled and chopped
- Sweet peppers, seeded and roughly chopped
- Zucchini, roughly chopped
- Eggplant, stemmed and roughly chopped
- Tomatoes, roughly chopped
- Garlic, peeled and crushed or finely chopped
- Salt, to taste
- A couple sprigs of thyme or a small handful of basil (optional)
Chop everything first and throw it into the pot, or – what I do – get the onion started in a generous glug of olive oil and then roughly chop your veggies in order of how long they take to cook – onions, peppers, zucchini, eggplant, tomatoes, garlic – adding them to the pot as you go. Season with salt as the veggies simmer – this will help them release their moisture into the stew. If I’m using thyme, I’ll pull the leaves off the stems and add them to the pot at any time, but if I’m using basil I tend to let the stew simmer for half an hour or so before adding the leaves.
Cook the ratatouille with the lid on or off – I put it partially on, to trap some of the moisture but also allow some steam to escape – for 45 minutes to an hour, or until the veggies are very tender and saucy and it looks like stew. Feel free to carry on cooking if you like to break it down further or partially purée it right in the pot with a hand-held immersion blender. Otherwise it’s good to go: Eat it right away or put it in the fridge for a day or three to let the flavours mingle, or freeze.
