rat.at.oui.lle | ra-ta-tōō'-ee
A fragrant stew of eggplant, tomatoes, zucchini, onions, and peppers.
Why Master It?
A Brief History
Equipment You'll Need
Recipe: Rataouille
Choosing and Preparing the Vegetables
Techniques and Tips
WHY MASTER IT?
Vegetables are the bedrock of French cuisine, the foundation upon which all is built.
Although cooking bibles like “The Escoffier Cookbook” and “Larousse Gastronomique”
may not have as many recipes centering on artichokes and carrots as they do on chicken or beef,
it is only because vegetables suffuse the canon and the kitchen,
from the broths and sauces that serve as the base of elaborate dishes, to the garnishes that finish them.
But there are a handful of dishes where vegetables are the stars. Ratatouille is beloved for its silky,
olive oil-imbued vegetables, which are saturated with the summery scents of garlic and herbs. By mastering it,
you will gain not only deeper insights into how to cook the vegetables in the recipe, but you will also be able
to apply that knowledge to other vegetables, making you a better cook all around.
Unlike much of French cuisine, ratatouille does not have a set recipe or precise technique.
There are as many versions as there are cooks, each slightly different in method and ingredients.
The most traditional recipes call for cooking each vegetable separately in a pot on the stove until well browned,
layering everything back into the pot with a generous amount of olive oil and some tomatoes,
and then letting it all slowly stew. Most cooks agree that this is the best way to ensure that the vegetables are
cooked to perfection before all are combined, and the flavors left to meld.
However, all that standing at the stove stirring vegetables can become tedious. Even “Larousse Gastronomique”
discards that method in its official recipe, throwing everything into the same pan in stages without the benefit
of that individual browning.
But there is another, better way around the tedium: using your oven. This is what many contemporary French cooks do,
and it’s the method on which our recipe is based. All the vegetables are bathed in olive oil and roasted separately
on baking pans until well browned. Then they’re mixed together in one pan, covered with more oil and some tomato,
and cooked again until everything condenses in flavor and practically falls apart, soaking up the good oil and
tomato almost like a confit.
That time spent steeping in good oil makes ratatouille one of the rare vegetable dishes that improves as it sits.
It is best made in advance, and you can be flexible with the way you cook it, roasting the vegetables in stages as time
allows, then combining them all even days later. It is also wonderfully versatile at the table, making a fine starter,
side dish or main course, one that can be eaten warm, at room temperature or cold.
A BRIEF HISTORY
A slowly cooked stew of eggplant, onions, peppers, summer squash and tomatoes has been simmering on hearths
around the Mediterranean since the 16th century, when tomatoes, peppers and squash from the Americas met the eggplant,
onion and olive oil already in residence.
This basic combination of summer vegetables takes different forms throughout the region. In Catalonia, it is simmered until
it is almost jamlike and called samfaina. In Turkey, it is known as turlu and may also contain potatoes, okra and green beans.
Lebanon, Egypt and Greece all have versions. In Provençe, it is scented with herbs and garlic and called ratatouille.
The term, which came into use in the 19th century, is derived from the French verbs ratouiller and tatouiller, both meaning to
stir up. And the pleasing, percussive-sounding word captures the essence of this dish: a stirring of several vegetables that
have been cooked separately before being combined.
Originally, a ratatouille could be any kind of simple or coarse stew. It could include meat, or it could do without it.
Nineteenth-century French military slang referred to the dish as a “rata.” The first written mentions of the all-vegetable stew from
Nice that we know today, also called sauté à la Niçoise, came in the early 20th century.
But by 1930, ratatouille had become entrenched in the Provençal repertoire. Henri Heyraud, the author of “La Cuisine à Nice,”
described it as a ragoût of eggplant, zucchini, peppers and tomatoes. The use of the word ragoût here is fitting; it means to
revive the taste, which is exactly what ratatouille does, giving cooked vegetables and herbs new verve when they are combined
and cooked again.
As Provençal cuisine became fashionable all over France (and to a lesser degree in Britain and the United States) in the latter
part of the 20th century, the popularity of ratatouille grew. It has since become a summer staple to serve with simple grilled meats,
or as a main course in its own right, with the requisite bottle of rosé.
EQUIPMENT YOU'LL NEED
Sharp knives You need a chef’s knife and paring knife to prepare the vegetables. And a well-sharpened
knife will make all that chopping go noticeably faster than a dull knife.
Baking sheets The vegetables in this ratatouille are roasted individually before they are all combined.
Ideally, you will have at least four large rimmed metal baking sheets for doing so. You can get away with fewer, but you will
need to cook the vegetables in batches.
Large baking dish You could heap all of the vegetables onto a baking sheet when it is time to cook them together.
But a large, shallow, attractive casserole that can travel straight to the table is an appealing way to serve the dish.
In this classic Provençal dish, summer vegetables, like eggplant, onions, peppers, tomatoes and zucchini, are covered in olive oil
and roasted separately, then all together, until they become a soft, harmonious stew. This recipe calls for seeding and peeling
the tomatoes, which is a bit of work. But it’s worth it for the intensity of flavor and the velvety texture. Ratatouille takes
some time to make, and tastes better the next day, so plan ahead. The upside is that it’s a perfect make-ahead dish for a party.
You can store it in the refrigerator for up to 5 days, then gently reheat it, or bring it to room temperature before serving.
INGREDIENTS
4 garlic cloves
2 medium white onions
3 medium zucchini
2 medium eggplant
3 sweet red peppers, such as bell peppers, red cubanelle or any other sweet variety
3 sprigs fresh thyme
1 cup olive oil, more as needed
2 large heirloom or beefsteak tomatoes
2 small bay leaves, ripped in half
1 1/2 teaspoons fine sea salt, more as needed
Freshly ground black pepper
Prepare the vegetables: Smash and peel 3 garlic cloves, reserving the 4th. Halve onions through their roots, and slice halves
into 1/4-inch-thick pieces. Slice zucchini into 1/4-inch-thick rounds. Cut eggplant into 1-inch cubes or spears. Seed peppers,
and cut them into 1/4-inch-thick strips.
Spread each vegetable on a separate rimmed baking sheet (use extra sheets as necessary). Add the 3 cloves of smashed garlic to
the onion pan. Add 1 sprig rosemary and 2 sprigs thyme to each of the pepper, eggplant and zucchini pans. Sprinkle salt lightly
over vegetables. Drizzle 3 tablespoons olive oil on each of the pans.
Place all the pans in the oven (or work in batches if they don’t fit at once). Cook until vegetables are very tender and lightly
browned at the edges. This will take about 35 to 40 minutes for the peppers (their skins should shrivel), 40 to 45 minutes for
the eggplant and zucchini (the eggplant should crisp slightly and the zucchini should be well cooked, so let them go 3 to 5
minutes longer than you normally might), and 60 to 65 minutes for the onions. Don’t worry about the vegetables being pretty;
they will meld into the ratatouille. Shake or stir the pans every 15 to 20 minutes or so, especially the onions.
In the meantime, prepare the tomatoes: Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add tomatoes and blanch until the skins split, about
10 seconds. Use a slotted spoon to quickly transfer the tomatoes to a bowl filled with ice water.
Using a paring knife, peel the cooled tomatoes (the skins should slip right off). Halve tomatoes across their equators. Set a
sieve over a bowl. Working over the bowl, use your fingers to seed the tomatoes, letting the seeds catch in the sieve and the
juice run into the bowl. Discard seeds but save juices. Dice tomatoes and add to the reserved juices in bowl.
Finely grate or mince remaining garlic clove. Add garlic to tomatoes along with bay leaves and a large pinch of salt. Set aside.
Once vegetables are done cooking, combine them on one baking sheet or a large shallow baking dish and add ingredients from tomato
bowl. Toss well. Vegetables will be stacked, and that’s O.K. Cover generously with olive oil, using remaining ¼ cup oil or more,
and sprinkle with salt. Everything should have a good coat of oil, but should not be drowning in it. Cook at least 1 hour,
stirring every 15 to 20 minutes, until vegetables are very tender and imbued with juices and oil. Add salt and pepper to taste,
then serve warm, or let cool.
CHOOSING AND PREPARING THE VEGETABLES
There are many ways you can cut the vegetables for ratatouille, but a combination of slices, rounds and spears gives the stew an attractive
look and some textural contrast. (Brush up on your technique with
our guide to basic knife skills
.)
Eggplant is like the meat of the ratatouille, adding a savory heft and richness. You can use any type of eggplant you like,
though if the skin is tough and leathery, consider peeling it first. If you’d prefer to keep the skin on, which gives ratatouille a nice texture,
look for tender, young, thin-skinned eggplant. In France, cooks often use large Italian purple-black eggplants. But you can also use graffiti, Japanese,
Chinese or white eggplant varieties, or use a combination of them for the most interesting and diverse texture. To prepare the eggplants, slice off the
top and bottom from each. Lay an eggplant on its side and cut it in half, then cut it into 1-inch chunks or spears. Repeat with remaining eggplant.
Peppers give a jammy sweetness and fruitiness to the stew pot. Choose a combination of red, yellow and orange bell peppers, or other
sweet peppers. Green bell peppers, which are harvested earlier than the red, orange and yellow ones, have a more pungent, grassy flavor and less sweetness;
they are not what you want for ratatouille. To prepare the peppers, lay one on its side and slice off the top and bottom. Halve the pepper, remove the seeds
and cut out the white veins. Slice into 1/4-inch-thick strips. Repeat with remaining peppers. Alternatively, after trimming and seeding the peppers, you can
cut them into 1/4-inch thick rounds.
Zucchini is soft, sweet and very succulent when slowly stewed in a ratatouille. You can use any variety of zucchini you find — the fresher,
the better. A mix of colors (yellow, dark green and pale green) makes for a particularly pretty dish. Always keep the skins on zucchini, or they will completely
fall apart as they cook. To prepare the zucchini, slice off the tops and bottoms. Lay each zucchini on its side. Cutting horizontally, slice into 1/4-inch-thick rounds.
Onions add a caramelized sweetness to ratatouille. Large Spanish onions or white onions (which have a high water content and some bite) are best here.
Keep in mind that as the onions cook, they sweeten, so unless you want a particularly sweet ratatouille, avoid red onions, Vidalias and other high-sugar onions. To
prepare the onions, halve them from the stem to the root, then peel. Next, lay them flat. For ratatouille, aim for 1/4-inch-thick slices — that is, unless you want
more pronounced onion pieces in the dish, in which case you can cut thicker pieces. The thicker the slices, the longer the onions will take to roast.
TECHNIQUES AND TIPS
Ratatouille is a freer and easier recipe than much of what you’ll find in the canon of French cuisine, requiring you to spend more time choosing the ingredients than
actually fiddling with them. That said, there are some techniques that will help you get the most deeply flavored dish.
Blanching tomatoes helps loosen the skin, making them easier to peel without losing any of their precious, sweet juices. The trick is remove them from the boiling water
before their flesh is cooked. You want to cook only the skin.
Choose tomatoes that are ripe but still firm; soft tomatoes won’t hold up to the peeling and blanching. You can use any variety as long as it is flavorful and sweet.
However, using large round tomatoes rather than small plum tomatoes makes the blanching, peeling and seeding go more quickly.
To begin, bring a medium pot of water to a boil. One at a time, drop the whole tomatoes into the boiling water. Cover and let boil for 10 seconds. Using a slotted spoon
or tongs, immediately remove the tomatoes from the pot and plunge them into a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking. Hold a cooled tomato in your hand and use a small
paring knife to cut out the stem. From there, you can start to peel the skin. It should slip right off.
Cut the peeled tomato in half around its equator. Set up a bowl with a mesh sieve sitting on top. Squeeze the tomato halves over the sieve so the seeds are caught in
the mesh and the juices pool in the bowl. The seeds should slip out easily, but you can use your fingers to pry any stubborn ones from the tomato flesh. Discard the
seeds in the sieve. Dice the tomato pulp and add it to the bowl with their juices. Repeat peeling and seeding with the remaining tomatoes.
COOKING AND SERVING
When you are making ratatouille, the quality of the olive oil is as important as that of the vegetables. Make sure to choose a good extra-virgin oil,
preferably from France. You’ll be using a lot of it here.
If you don’t have four baking sheets, roast the vegetables on individual sheets in succession. Transfer the cooked vegetables to a bowl as they finish
cooking. This takes longer, since you can’t roast all the vegetables at once. (Likewise, if you can’t fit all of the baking sheets into your oven at once,
cook them in batches.)
If your ratatouille emerges from the oven with a lot of excess liquid in the pan, pour the liquid into a saucepan and reduce it over the stove. Then add
it back to the dish once it is reduced, to take advantage of its flavor.
Try the traditional method: Instead of roasting each vegetable on baking sheets, cook them on the stovetop. Heat your largest skillet on the stove, adding
a film of oil, and cook each vegetable separately (and the onions, smashed garlic and herbs together). Cook in batches if necessary, so as not to crowd the
pan. (If you crowd the pan, the vegetables will steam rather than brown, and cook unevenly.) As the vegetables soften and brown, transfer them to a bowl.
(You can add all the different kinds of cooked vegetables to the same bowl.) Add more oil with each batch of vegetables, and season with salt and pepper as
you go. When all of the vegetables are cooked, transfer them back to the skillet, along with the tomatoes, grated garlic and a good dose of olive oil.
Simmer, uncovered, until they meld together, about 30 to 45 minutes.
You can make this dish in stages, if that suits your schedule. Roast the vegetables separately a day or two before combining them, and then refrigerate them.
When you are ready to return to them, combine with the tomatoes, remaining herbs and oil and cook for at least an hour to finish.
Or make the entire dish ahead. It is best to make your ratatouille one or two days before serving so the flavors have a chance to meld and mellow. Once the dish
is cooked and cooled, transfer it to a container, adding a little oil if necessary, and refrigerate for up to five days. When you’re ready to serve, bring it to
room temperature (this takes about an hour) and drizzle with a tiny bit more olive oil. You can also reheat it on the stove or in the microwave to serve it warm.
