Provençal summer vegetable stew: Nice's great vegetable dish
Origin: Provence, France (Nice)
From the journey of Zucchini.
Ratatouille is the definitive summer vegetable dish of Provence, a slow-cooked stew of eggplant (aubergine), zucchini (courgette), tomatoes, onions, garlic, and bell peppers in olive oil, seasoned with thyme, basil, and bay. The name derives from the Occitan 'ratatolha' and the French verb 'touiller', to stir, to toss (and the dish was originally peasant food: a one-pot preparation cooked outdoors over wood fire with whatever was ripening in the garden in late July and August. The Niçoise origin is significant: Nice and its surrounding coast belonged to the Kingdom of Sardinia until 1860 and has always sat at the cultural intersection of French and Italian cuisines, sharing olive oil, basil, and an instinctive suspicion of butter with its Ligurian neighbours just across the border. Ratatouille belongs to a Mediterranean family of remarkably similar dishes that span the entire coastline and reflect a shared agricultural history. The Catalan escalivada roasts the same vegetables over embers; the Basque piperrada centres on peppers and tomatoes; the Italian ciambotta of the South stews the same quartet together; the Levantine turlu and the Turkish türlü braise the same combination in the same olive oil. What all these dishes share is the convergence of two distinct vegetable traditions: the ancient Old World eggplant-and-olive-oil tradition that arrived in southern Europe through Arab and Mediterranean trade routes centuries earlier, and the New World vegetables) tomato, bell pepper, and zucchini (that arrived after 1492 and transformed the palette of Mediterranean cooking in the 16th and 17th centuries. Without the New World vegetables, ratatouille does not exist in its current form. The elevation of ratatouille from peasant food to emblem of French gastronomy owes much to the rehabilitation of Provençal cooking in the 20th century, notably through the influence of Auguste Escoffier and later Richard Olney, whose writings on Provençal food in the 1970s made the cooking of the Midi fashionable in a way it had never been under the dominance of classical Parisian cuisine. The version made internationally famous by Michel Guérard and later adapted by Thomas Keller as his 'confit byaldi') precise concentric slices of each vegetable arranged over a tomato sauce base and slow-roasted (is visually magnificent but quite different in character from the traditional rustic stew. This recipe makes the honest, traditional version: vegetables cut into substantial chunks, cooked separately to preserve their individual character, then combined and simmered together so the flavours can unify. The eggplant is the most important vegetable in the dish) it provides body, absorbs olive oil, and gives ratatouille its depth and substance. It must be properly softened and not allowed to remain chalky or half-cooked.
Ratatouille keeps for up to 4 days in the refrigerator and the flavour improves considerably on day two. It can be served as a side dish alongside grilled lamb, chicken, or fish; as a sauce spooned over pasta or polenta; as a filling for omelettes; or as a starter spread on bruschetta. Cold ratatouille with good bread and a few olives is one of the finest summer lunches in the Provençal tradition. For a more refined presentation, each vegetable can be cooked completely separately and combined only at the end, preserving distinct textures: but the long-simmered unified version has a depth of flavour that the more precise method cannot match.
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