French · Side
Ratatouille
- Easy
- 60 min
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with fresh herbs arguing happily on top, aromatics blooming from the first bite, fading in warm spice.
Ingredients
- 1 eggplant, 2 zucchini, 2 bell peppers
- 4 tomatoes or 400g canned
- 1 onion, 4 garlic cloves
- Herbes de Provence, basil
- Olive oil
The skills inside
Sautéing & the shallow fryKnife cuts: dice, julienne, bias
The words inside
Peppers & Eggplant: The Nightshade Late SummerZucchiniTomatoes: The Argument for AugustGenovese Basil
Allergen screen
None found among the 14 screened.
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Cut everything to equal 2cm dice.
- Sauté each vegetable separately until browned; this is the whole secret.
- Combine with tomatoes, garlic, herbs; simmer gently 20 min. 20 min
- Rest: it's better warm or next day, with torn basil.
How it should come out
- Every piece is still recognisable as its own vegetable at roughly 2cm; nothing has collapsed into a common pulp.
- Spoon up a few pieces of each and the eggplant, zucchini and pepper all carry browned faces: the pan colour is on every vegetable, not just one, and none of it reads uniform grey.
- Eggplant is creamy through with no squeak; zucchini yields but holds its square and has not watered out.
- Liquid in the pot is a small amount of glossy, oil-slicked juice, not a thin wash; a spoon dragged across the bottom leaves a track that fills back slowly.
- Taste an eggplant cube and a piece of tomato back to back (both are seasoned, neither bland against the other), and the garlic and herbs taste cooked-sweet and perfumed with no raw grassy bite.
Where it goes wrong Everything went into one crowded pan, the vegetables released their water and stewed instead of browning, so the dish arrives grey and slack in a thin pool with the zucchini gone to pulp.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Chianti Classico or Barbera d’Alba
- Also Right
- Vermentino for the lighter plates
- From the Taps
- Italian pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- San Pellegrino Sanbittèr
Tomato’s acid demands equal acid: Italian reds evolved beside the sauce, and the regional pairing is the safest law in wine.
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