Kids Make Ratatouille
September 26th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Posted in kids
Celebrating the best of the season
I celebrated the first day of fall with the kids in my food appreciation classes by making a classic French stew with the finest vegetables the season had to offer.
Turns out the kids were already familiar. I gave them a clue: Think of a rat who works under a chef’s hat.
“Ratatouille!” they cried in unison.
A classic ratatouille incorporates onion, eggplant, red bell pepper, zucchini and tomato into an ethereal melange. This is one dish where the sum is definitely greater than any one of the parts. Where the final ambrosial flavor comes from remains a culinary mystery for the ages. But not without some controversy. Some chefs insist that each of the vegetable ingredients must be carefully sauteed individually, and only combined with the others near the end of the preparation. Others are equally adamant that ratatouille is more a French grandmother’s dish of convenience, and should be cooked in a pot more like a simple stew rather than being fussed over.
The version we used comes from the Time-Life series on French cooking edited by the famed American cook and writer Richard Olney in the 1970s. Olney recommends the stew approach, which happens to work better for a classes because we just don’t have time to saute each of the ingredients individually. This method results in a more liquidy dish that you can make drier if you remove the lid from your pot and allow it to cook until some of the liquid has evaporated. But for some of the kids in our classes, the broth was the best part, as they were less enthusiastic about eating the vegetables. (Surprised?)
Start by cutting a large onion into medium dice and sauteeing it over moderate heat in a heavy pot greased with about 3 tablespoons extra olive oil. Season the onion aggressively with salt to bring out the juices and cover the pot while it simmers. Next, add 1 small eggplant, peeled and cut into medium dice. Then stir in one large tomato, peeled, seeded and roughly chopped. (Peel the tomato by first immersing it for 20 seconds in a pot of boiling water to loosen the skin. Cut it in half and squeeze out the seeds. You can do this ahead.)
Continue cooking the vegetables while you cut 1 red bell pepper into quarters and remove the stem and seeds. Cut the remaining pepper into medium dice and stir it into the pot. Then peel 1 large zucchini and cut it into medium dice as you have the previous vegetables. Add this to the pot, and stir in 1 teaspoon herbes de Provence. Cover the pot and continue cooking until all of the vegetables are perfectly tender and the flavors have melded, about 1 hour. Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary.
Ratatouille goes perfectly with a roast chicken. But as you can see, our kids enjoyed it all by itself out of hot drink cups.
What a delicious recipe! The hubs (Roger) and I went to the market to get the ingredients and I will be cooking it tomorrow- maybe Mom will help. 🙂