First things first: we are describing the classic preparation of ratatouille here. This is not the one from the now legendary animated movie of the same name, in which the rat Rémy, the ingenious “little chef”, prepares a simple dish for the nasty critic Anton Ego, which catapults the latter emotionally back to his childhood and his mother. But it is certainly the preparation that Anton Ego then has to think about, because his mama will have prepared it for him in the same or a very similar way when he was a child.
The preparation from the movie is also not a so-called Tian Provençal, as many people often think. Instead, it is based on a more recent creation called “Confit Byaldi”.
One key difference is that in a classic ratatouille, the vegetables are cooked individually and only joined together at the end. This gives you full control over the perfect preparation of each individual product.
You need eggplant, bell pepper and zucchini, as well as tomatoes, onion and garlic. Apart from salt and pepper, fresh herbs are the main seasoning. We use the full range of bay, thyme, rosemary, oregano and sage – a typical Provençal mix. If you don’t like every one of these herbs, you can narrow down the selection accordingly.
If you don’t have much time, use peeled canned tomatoes (or tomato puree or passata, but then it lacks the chunkiness of the tomatoes). We cook with fresh tomatoes, also to explain what tomato concassée is.
Slightly cut the tomatoes crosswise at the stem and at the opposite end. Just cut through the skin. Then place them in boiling water for 30 seconds and immediately afterwards in water that is as cold as possible. This loosens the skin from the flesh.
Now you can peel off the skin with the help of a small knife. This takes a little work, but is done quickly with a little practice.
Next, cut the tomatoes in half and then into quarters. This makes it easy to remove the hard stem, the seeds and the jelly surrounding them. This is also done with the help of a small knife, but with some tomatoes your fingers are enough. What remains is a tomato fillet of pure flesh, which you can now cut into pieces depending on the size of the tomato. Ours are about 1 cm in size.
Chop the onion and garlic. Ratatouille is a rustic dish, so you don’t need to work too finely here.
Gently sauté the onion and garlic in a little olive oil over a medium heat until translucent. The tomato fillets are then added and carefully salted. We also add a pinch of sugar to enhance the flavor of the tomatoes. This simmers for 30 minutes with the lid on. The result is melted but still chunky tomatoes in an intense broth.
If you use tinned tomatoes, you should proceed in the same way, but use the peeled fruit rather than the liquid surrounding it – ratatouille is by no means vegetables in tomato sauce!
Meanwhile, prepare the other ingredients. Cut the eggplant, pepper and zucchini into roughly equal pieces of approx. 1.5 cm. You can also work with larger or smaller pieces, which leads to fascinatingly different results. This is all legitimate and purely a matter of taste.
How much of each of the three vegetables you use is also up to your own taste. We use roughly the same amount respectively. However, the ingredient list at the end of this recipe is for guidance only and should not be taken as exact. Everyone cooks their own ratatouille.
First, fry the diced eggplants. You should not use a non-stick frying pan for this, as you want them to develop roasting aromas. Instead, use steel or enamel and a medium-high heat (we: 7 out of 10). If the heat is too low, the vegetables will cook instead of frying.
Eggplant absorbs oil immediately, but releases it again later. Therefore, in the case of eggplant, you need to use a little more olive oil. Don’t worry, more will remain in the pan. Sauté the eggplant in the oil, turning occasionally, until the pieces and the bottom of the pan start to brown. While doing this, add a little salt so that the vegetable releases more water. This will also ensure that the whole dish is seasoned evenly.
Transfer the pieces of eggplant to a bowl and continue with the bell pepper. They contain a lot of liquid and need to be roasted for a while, perhaps at a slightly higher temperature than the eggplant (we: 8 out of 10). Season with salt again gently. When the first brown spots appear, remove the peppers from the pan.
If any oil should be missing, add a little. Then fry the zucchini cubes at the same temperature as the eggplant and salt them gently as well. The bottom of the pan will get darker and darker during this process. This is intentional, but of course it should not turn black.
Turn off the heat, but leave the pan on the hot plate. Return all the vegetables to the pan and add the tomato concassée. Gently mix everything together with a wooden spoon, using the liquid from the concassée to deglaze the bottom of the pan, i.e. dissolve the roasting substances by stirring the bottom with the wooden spoon. You can now season to taste with more salt (if necessary) and ground black pepper.
All that’s missing are the herbs. Roughly pluck the oregano and sage leaves over the vegetables. Add the thyme and rosemary sprigs whole and remove them or their stems at the end. The same applies to a bay leaf, of course.
From now on, the dish is braised, i.e. gently cooked to the end in its own juices over a low heat. This prevents the vegetables from falling apart and allows all the flavors to come together perfectly. You can take more or less time for this. You can either bring the vegetables to a gentle simmer once, put a lid on and finish cooking them in 40 minutes on a low heat (for us, this would be level 4 out of 10), or you can set them to an even lower temperature (for us: 2 out of 10) and give them another two hours. You could even cook the ratatouille overnight at the lowest temperature.
The result is perfectly cooked vegetables that remain fully identifiable, both visually and in terms of taste. The herbs add complexity to the sensational aroma. The resulting sauce has a golden colour and is light and delicious.
Enjoy.
And may the taste be with you.
Ingredients (for 4 people as a side dish or 2 people as a main course):
Tomato concassée:
2 tbsp olive oil
2 medium onions (approx. 100 g)
3 – 4 cloves of garlic
5 – 6 tomatoes (approx. 550 g)
Salt
Optional: 1 pinch of sugar
Other vegetables:
Olive oil as required
2 smaller eggplants or one larger one (approx. 250 g)
2 peppers, maybe of different colours (approx. 250 g)
1 – 2 medium zucchinis (approx. 250 – 300 g)
Salt and pepper
Herbs to taste, for example:
1 bay leaf
5 sprigs of thyme
1 sprig of rosemary
4 sprigs of oregano
4 sage leaves
