Ratatouille Recipe

Food > Recipes > Ratatouille      

This Niçoise dish is much more than a vegetable soup. It can be prepared fairly quickly by cooking everything together at the same time, but that needs to be done in the correct sequence to not miss out the art and the flavour of the dish.

It's also true that the recipe can legitimately vary (somewhat) according to tastes, but the variations should be based on experience. The volume is also very variable.

"Too much" doesn't apply to ratatouille. Cook it the first time, and eat it hot as the main course; then have it again later as a cold hors-d'oeuvre. In the summer time, it's great as a cold main-course dish. It keeps for several days in the refridgerator. Ratatouille is good served with couscous grain (semoule) or rice.

Cooking Pot - we use a large pressure cooker, without the pressure.

Recipe (12 servings makes about 4.5 litres)

1.6 kg tomato [tomate] 700 g eggplant (2) [aubergine] 500 g zucchini (2) [courgette] 700 g bell pepper (2-3) [poivron] 1 kg onion [oignon]

6 cloves garlic [ail] Herbes de Provence (basilic,thyme, parsley) olive oil [huile d'olive] salt, pepper [sel, poivre] 140 g tomato paste

Classical Method

This is the "old fashioned" method. We did it this way the first couple of times, just for the experience. It fills the kitchen surfaces with pots and pans, takes a bit longer, but doesn't really add to the flavor.

1. Cut the eggplant into rondelles; keep separate. Peel the zucchini, cut into rondelles, keep separate. Clean the bell pepper, cut into small strips, keep separate. Chop the onion, keep separate.

2. Peel, de-seed and drain the tomatoes (*)

3. Using four separate cooking pots, put some olive oil in the bottom; put in the eggplant, zucchini, pepper, and onion into their own pots; sprinkle some flour onto the eggplant and onto the zucchini. Put the four pots on to cook slowly. Each cooks for about 30 minutes, but test and cook each until correctly soft.

4. In a large cooking pot with a thick bottom, put in olive oil, chopped garlic, herbes de Provence. Squeeze the tomatoes in by hand. Cook slowly until you have a thick tomato sauce.

5. Add the four separately cooked vegetables to the tomato sauce, mix thoroughly and heat. Pour off the excess oil from the top. It's ready to serve.