Older Daughter decided to make something exotic-sounding: Ratatouille. I typed this into a search engine just to make sure I was spelling it correctly, and it spat back some sample photos.
Despite the elegance of the name, my understanding is ratatouille is something of a peasant dish, originally designed to make humble ingredients appear as sophisticated as possible ... as indeed it does.
Older Daughter started by slicing zucchini, tomatoes, and eggplant.
She arranged them in a decorative fashion in a pan.
By the time the pan was full, it looked very festive.
Baking it blended all the flavors.
Sophisticated fare indeed!
Ya'll are going all out southern on us! This is one of my favorite dishes. (Her presentation is prettier than I've ever seen).
ReplyDeleteI add potatoes and cheese and bell peppers. Veggies all chunked instead of sliced, and tossed together in a bowl (after cooking)
before serving.
The recipe I found and used long ago called for everything to be cooked separately then mixed together when done. Since cheese goes well goes well with all those ingredients, I couldn't resist topping it with grated cheese and melting it before eating it. You can use other veggies instead of or in addition to those called for. That's what us peasants do! Whatever is in your garden can probably work.If you like a little heat, jalapeños work in place of bell peppers.
This dish is one I've always thought would be good cooking the veggies on a grill, but haven't done it yet. I've seen it on a cooking show with the veggies chunked up then baked on a pan then thrown in a bowl and tossed with evoo, and sprinkled with grated cheese.
But OD's presentation is by far the prettiest!
Also onions are wonderful in this. They cook up sweet.
DeleteNot a fan of eggplant.
ReplyDeleteI prefer tomatoes, onions, cucumbers and mozzarella with a little olive oil, vinegar and salt and pepper.
Some of my fondest memories of food from my youth are depression era foods. One was dandelion salad with the mentioned greens as the main dish and then a bacon and vinegar welted dressing. The other was called weiner soup. It was a potato soup with caramelized onion and ground up weiners. Both were almost a treat at our house.
ReplyDeletePatrice, This looks really yummy. May I ask a question? Some time (maybe years)back you posted about a cookbook you used that (If I remember correctly) gave recipes for copycat commercial ingredients. I'm afraid my 73 year old brain is not remembering it well. I've looked at your key words to see if I could find the name of it to no avail. Do you remember it or is my old brain short circuiting? Thank you.
ReplyDeleteSince I'm on the admin side of the blog, I can do more sophisticated searches. I have well over 4,000 blog posts, so often it's difficult to remember what I've posted over the years. However after searching for many different keywords, I simply cannot find anything about a copycat recipe book. I vaguely remember owning one a long time ago, but I ended up giving it away because I was unfamiliar with (and therefore not enamored with) most of the restaurants and recipes they used. Sorry I can't be more helpful!
Delete- Patrice
Kate & Patrice, could the book have been “Cheaper & Better: Homemade Alternatives to Storebought Goods”? Patrice, you referred to this book in a previous post and I ordered it from a used book seller. Very useful book to have.
DeleteForgot to give the author’s name. “Cheaper & Better” is by Nancy Birnes.
DeleteYes, you're right! I was thinking solely in terms of recipe books, but you hit the nail on the head. "Cheaper & Better" offers thousands of options of homemade versions of store-bought items. Highly highly highly recommended!
Delete- Patrice
The main ingredients for my ratatouille are tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, onions and garlic, and some mushrooms. Lots of herbs, cooked separately and combined. I've canned it, and found that if I add some cooked chicken chunks, tomato sauce, and extra herbs when it comes time to use it, I combine it with cooked fettucine. That makes a pretty good chicken cacciatore. I substitute frozen, broiled tofu for the chicken when my vegetarian friends dine.
ReplyDeleteWow! I hadn't thought of canning it . Zuchinni is supposed to be pressure canned so I'm assuming that's the method you use. It seems to me it would become more saucey because of the tomatoes so I can see it working in chicken caccitore. I dice the veggies up a little smaller and add the whole shebang to spaghetti sauce along with browned Italian sausage or ground beef. It makes it into a one dish meal. I think I'll try canning it that way. Thanks for the idea!
DeleteThat is pretty. I would have to sub the eggplant with something else. I think I will make that. I have never seen it arranged like that.
ReplyDeleteServed it at my wedding in 1989. Mmm, yum.
ReplyDelete