Ratatouille's Ratatouille

This was so much easier to make than I expected! It was a lot of fun to put together and was delicious! This is a more simplified version of the original recipe (for people who didn’t study with the French masters). Look up “Confit Byaldi, Thomas Keller” online if you want the original recipe.

In the movie they used an oval baking dish; I used a 9” glass pie dish (before the tomato sauce is in the dish, you might want to trace your parchment paper which will top the vegetables; you probably want it a little larger than the dish so it can tuck in around the edges a bit).

On the bottom of the dish, spread 1 cup of tomato purée or tomato paste (I’ve also used canned prepared diced tomatoes). Then, on top of that, add 1/2 onion, finely chopped and 2 garlic cloves, very thinly sliced. Stir it all together with 1 tbsp olive oil and then season generously with salt and pepper (and thyme/parsley; optional). Then spread it out evenly again. Put a little up the sides of the dish, too, as it will keep the vegetables from sticking to the dish.

Using a mandolin or, even faster, a food processor with a slicing blade, cut the following into 1/16-inch-thick rounds after trimming off the ends: 1 small eggplant (if you can get “Italian” or “Japanese” eggplant that would be a better size. I couldn’t find that, so I used a regular eggplant cut into quarters the long way, and only ended up using about 1 quarter. You can see in the picture that they end up like triangles, but put the rounded skin-side on top and it’s hardly noticeable); 1 smallish zucchini; 1 smallish yellow squash (the closer to a uniform cucumber shape, the better, but maybe get a couple of small squash if they're cheap, so that you have more of the larger rounds to use); 4 firm Roma tomatoes. So now you have four separate colorful piles of veggies. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

On top of the tomato sauce, arrange a circular strip of slices of the vegetables going from the outer edge to the inside of the baking dish, overlapping so just a smidgen of each flat surface is visible, alternating vegetables.

My order was: zucchini (green), tomato (red), eggplant (green), squash (yellow). If you can get some help, this will go quickly. Think ‘assembly line’. I’d put 4-5 piles together in my hand at once, then gather the piles and lay them in the dish.

Drizzle 1 tbsp olive oil over the vegetables and season them generously with salt and pepper. Remove the leaves from a few thyme springs with your fingertips, running them down the stem. Sprinkle the fresh thyme over the dish.


Cover dish with a piece of parchment paper cut to fit/tuck inside.

Bake for approximately 45 to 55 minutes, until vegetables are clearly cooked, but with some structure left so they are not totally limp. And you should see that the tomato sauce is bubbling up around them.

We served this on top of a helping of rice — make sure the rice gets some of that tomato sauce!

Sharing Those Family Recipes

I was asked recently what my best go-to dishes were for Potlucks. Well, I'm never the one to answer that. Though I can cook, I'm not the most confident cooker, so my dishes are simple: sweet gherkins wrapped in very thin salami and stuck on a toothpick; pasta salad — stuff I don't have to cook. Then I heard one person answer "I have a great dish, but the recipe is a family secret!"

Really? A family secret? That always brings back memories of a few years ago at a neighbor's party. They had invited some of their coworkers and friends from outside of the neighborhood, so there were lots of new faces there. One of her coworkers had brought a carrot cake and everyone who knew her oohed and ahhed over it, saying "Lisa brought her carrot cake! Oh, you have to try it! I love it when she brings that famous carrot cake of hers!" Now I had never made a carrot cake from scratch, and have always wanted to since it is my favorite kind of cake. Hers was yummy and I thought to myself "what a great way to learn to make one, and I might get a new friend out of it!"

So I found a piece of paper and a pen in the kitchen, then sought out Lisa. We'd only just met that evening, but had joined in various conversations together and so we already had a connection.

"Lisa, can I get your email address so that I can get your carrot cake recipe?"

She smiled and said "oh, it's my grandmother's recipe and so it's an old family secret! I just can't give it out."

"Oh... no problem!" And that was where we left it. She never did give me her email because that would have been awkward, so that was that. No new friendship was forged. I have to wonder: what did she gain from that?

I guess I can understand it if you plan to make yourself rich with the recipe, but usually the Keepers Of The Secret do not have those kinds of plans. Even if they do, think of Mrs. Fields and the infamous cookie recipe — giving that out did NOT put Mrs. Fields out of business! On top of it all, I ended up feeling spitefully bad about that woman. I fantasized about finding out where she lived and sneaking in one day just to take a quick picture of the recipe she was protecting so fiercely (insert evil laugh here)!

It's just so silly. Share your damn recipes, people! (Now if only Universal Studios will give up their secrets about "Butterbeer"!)