Yes, I Made The Ratatouille from Ratatouille
I stumbled across this photo while looking through my Picasa web album that serves as the host for all of the images on The Best Food Blog Ever. I guess I uploaded it with the intention of writing about it and never did. Since all I’ve seen for the better part of a week, when I looked out of my kitchen window, is not-melting-fast-enough piles of snow, I decided that it was time to write out-of-season again and try to pretend that we’re not weeks away from any true sense of spring.
In case this doesn’t look at all familiar, it is the dish from Pixar’s Ratatouille, which we’ve seen twice and absolutely love. We had a dinner party planned, and I was inspired by the movie. So, it was on one of those warm summer evenings last year that I got the crazy idea to try to replicate the titular dish from that movie.
The actual recipe that is represented here, and which appears in the movie, is Thomas Keller’s Confit Byaldi. It’s a colorful mosaic of red, yellow, and orange peppers, tomatoes, Japanese eggplant, yellow squash, and green zucchini.
As would be expected, you spend the majority of your time in this recipe with the preparation and assembly – slicing all of the vegetables to an exacting thickness, then layering them in tight groups of seven colors in a spiral pattern in a roasting pan. Beneath all of this is a simple tomato sauce accented with garlic, onion, and thyme, and the whole affair is liberally drizzled with a vinaigrette before being set into an oven for a couple of hours, then flashed under a broiler right before serving.
The result? Sure, it’s pretty, but for the effort I probably wouldn’t attempt this dish again. It takes quite a while to slice all of the vegetables (I used a truffle slicer, and even then it still took longer than expected), and in the end, the dish tastes exactly like its components – there’s no magical transformation, no ascension to some uber-level of otherworldly deliciousness, but then again Keller probably has access to better quality produce than I do. It’s a great showcase for seasonal vegetables, to be sure, but you’d probably achieve the same overall taste with a quick chop, a saute in olive oil, and the addition of the same herb vinaigrette.
February 10, 2009 Comments
Slow Roasted Zucchini, Sea Salt, Olive Oil
Since it’s the height of summer, there’s a lot of fresh, local produce to be had. While we don’t get out to the farmers’ stands often enough, the local supermarket has a wonderful program where they sell locally sourced fruits and vegetables, highlighting exactly where the food that you’re buying is coming from. A couple of weeks ago, there was a nice mound of zucchini that was so tempting, we bought a few without a real plan for what to do with them.
I have a truffle shaver which has, for years, been one of my favorite gadgets in the kitchen. Mind you, I’ve only ever shaved a single truffle on this contraption, but it works especially well with parmesan cheese, chocolate, and hard vegetables. It’s got a blade attached to a screw, and you turn the screw to make the opening wider or narrower as you need it. I hacked the ends off of the zucchini and, in a flash, had passed them over the truffle shaver, forming a neat pile of uniformly thin rounds on my cutting board.
Now, if the preparation is going to be simple, I suppose I’ll have to make the presentation a little snappier. I took a big round pan and started layering the zucchini rounds in concentric circles, alternating directions with each full layer. Between each layer I drizzled some good-quality olive oil and a sprinkling of sea salt. When I was done, I popped the whole thing into the oven and slow roasted the zucchini for about an hour, until the rounds were browned along the edges and top.
This approach concentrates the already-summer fresh flavor of the zucchini quite well. The salt, as salt does with any food, enhances the subtle qualities of the vegetable, while roasting condenses and focuses the flavor. Next time, though, I think I’ll cut the rounds thicker, or into matchsticks, since slicing them this thin sacrificed texture a little, resulting in soft rounds instead of crisps.
July 31, 2008 Comments
