Ratatouille's Ratatouille!

Tell me I’m not alone in this: You saw Ratatouille, fell in love with Remy (though you still jumped a foot in the air when you saw a significantly less-charming rodent scamper across your path on the way home) and found yourself with a pressing craving, not for the heavy and too-often soggy traditional Provençal ratatouille, but that kaleidoscope of spiraled colors they served to the haughty and (spoiler!) soon-humbled restaurant critic.

I can’t believe how well this worked out. I also can’t believe I cooked a cartoon dish created by an imaginary rat. But I can believe I’ll be making this again tomorrow, because it’s delicious, seasonal, and an incredible cinch to make.



We’re just getting to the point in the summer where all of the vegetables are readying themselves for their farmers’ market close-up, so the timing couldn’t be better. And aside from some needling parchment paper origami and fine-slicing of vegetables (which, as we well know, with my new BFF is frighteningly easy, although the rankings are more like Deb’s thumbnail: 0, Mandoline: 1 right now), you need a minimum of dishes and time to get this together. Not bad for something showy enough for a dinner party ta-da, right?



There are a lot of things not traditional about this version of ratatouille–the lack of herbes de province, that it’s baked and that we ate it with both couscous and a dollop of soft goat cheese–but if you’re like me, and the chunkier authentic stuff has never done it for you, it’s time for this re-creation.



And here is where I will introduce you to d’oh!-moment number two-thousand-seventy-four: Guess what the New York Times ran in their Dining section last month? The recipe for Thomas Keller’s Confit Byaldi, the accordion-fanned version of ratatouille used in the movie! It’s available on their website, looks gorgeous, but although it’s fairly simple for a French Laundry recipe, it’s a bit more involved than my recipe. Though I am sure I will try it one day, I’m almost glad I didn’t see it first as I might not have gone out on my own to find my layered ratatouille nirvana. And wasn’t that the whole theme of the movie in the first place?


Ratatouille’s Ratatouille
As envisioned by Smitten Kitchen

1/2 onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, very thinly sliced
1 cup tomato puree (such as Pomi)
2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 small eggplant (my store sells these “Italian Eggplant” that are less than half the size of regular ones; it worked perfectly)
1 smallish zucchini
1 smallish yellow squash
1 longish red bell pepper
Few sprigs fresh thyme
Salt and pepper
Few tablespoons soft goat cheese, for serving

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Pour tomato puree into bottom of an oval baking dish, approximately 10 inches across the long way. Drop the sliced garlic cloves and chopped onion into the sauce, stir in one tablespoon of the olive oil and season the sauce generously with salt and pepper.

Trim the ends off the eggplant, zucchini and yellow squash. As carefully as you can, trim the ends off the red pepper and remove the core, leaving the edges intact, like a tube.

On a mandoline, adjustable-blade slicer or with a very sharp knife, cut the eggplant, zucchini, yellow squash and red pepper into very thin slices, approximately 1/16-inch thick.

Atop the tomato sauce, arrange slices of prepared vegetables concentrically from the outer edge to the inside of the baking dish, overlapping so just a smidgen of each flat surface is visible, alternating vegetables. You may have a handful leftover that do not fit.

Drizzle the remaining tablespoon olive oil over the vegetables and season them generously with salt and pepper. Remove the leaves from the thyme sprigs with your fingertips, running them down the stem. Sprinkle the fresh thyme over the dish.

Cover dish with a piece of parchment paper cut to fit inside. (Tricky, I know, but the hardest thing about this.)

Bake for approximately 45 to 55 minutes, until vegetables have released their liquid and are clearly cooked, but with some structure left so they are not totally limp. They should not be brown at the edges, and you should see that the tomato sauce is bubbling up around them.

Serve with a dab of soft goat cheese on top, alone, or with some crusty French bread, atop polenta, couscous, or your choice of grain.

Modest Needs, can you help?

Have you ever heard of Modest Needs?

Even though the link I have provided takes you straight to my particular grant request, you can go to the homepage to check out the whole Modest Needs story from the "Start Here" section on the menu bar, or really, from the top of any page_ including mine.

My own grant request is modest, as I transition back into new employment, after a recession lay-off 10 months ago. Your donation, of any size to my request, will be ever so appreciated! Just click on the link below and thank-you, very much!!

Application 159557: New Job - Rent Help - Modest Needs®

*Be sure to pass this information on to those you know who may need the kind of help available through a Modest Needs grant!!

Choosing Not to Anticipate; Enjoying the Surprise

The Fedex delivery-person just knocked on the door with a package for me in exchange for a signature; it was from The Crown Publishing Group, as it was so stamped on a Random House mailing label.
I had been looking for this package when first notified that my name had been selected randomly, in response to an article posted about the author and her book, on one of my currently favorite foodie blogs. This kind of news really is unexpected, then the promised prize becomes secretly hoped for, and overall the experience is an exciting little lift!

After the initial news, days of waiting passed that seemed to turn into "weeks of anticipation." I contacted the prize-giver to be sure there hadn't been some mistake, some delay of which I was unaware. I was reassured that proper notification had been followed-up, and the item was on its way to the address I had provided.

More days passed; I wasn't really obsessing about the material proof of this luck in my life. Intermittently, I was just 'noticing' that the promised item wasn't coming! Finally yesterday however, I woke up realizing that I had let go of any further anticipation of it arriving all together. If and when it came was fine, if it didn't, that was also fine.

This morning I woke up with a fleeting thought that the 'package' was arriving today. So fleeting that I decided not to pay attention to the thought, because I am committed to living a life free of thinking habits centered in anxiety. A practice of conscious attention that lately I am learning the least little bit to practice more adroitly.

After breakfast, my attention thoroughly engrossed in the morning computer roamings for jobs, and completing all daily correspondence, there was an assertive knock at the front door.

As I said, and to my unexpected surprise, there was the randomly selected prize made manifest in the delivery hands of the Fedex driver!! After thanking the efficient delivery-person for wishing me a good rest of the day, I closed the door looking over the cover of the sturdy envelop, in which this weighted prize lay waiting. Waiting to be unwrapped and discovered.

Parting the adhered flap on the back side of the envelop, I reached in and pulled out a bright and shiny hardbound book. A brand new book whose glossy jacket was only slightly worn, from a nine-day by ground, journey from New York City, to Oregon!
Opening the front cover of the new book, I discovered the formal note card with the CPG logo and printed directly under it, a note: "With compliments"!

I have a new friend; a new cookbook is always treated this way once it arrives in my kitchen!! This one written by founding chef of Greens Restaurant in San Francisco, Deborah Madison. It is titled: "Seasonal Fruit DESSERTS, From Orchard, Farm and Market"!! Woo! Hoo!

With a daughter about to graduate from college, this surprising gift is going to see a lot of action and joy this spring and summer! A big THANK-YOU to the folks hosting the foodblog Culinate, for randomly selecting mine as one of the names to recieve what is soon to become, a well-used source of memory-making with family and friends, in the kitchen and on the back deck of this seasoned and passionate home cook!

Peggy Markel's Culinary Adventures hosts, Ruth of Gourmet Magazine's Adventures

The video format used for this vid is not very reliable, but the video on the food of North Africa, is a nice introduction to a part of the world where I went to kindergarten! Yes, it's true!

Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution- This entire series of 8 videos, is dedicated with love, to all of my obese friends & family members!

Mom, Dan, Brian, Professeur Krause_ eating issues are eating issues, whether you are too skinny or too fat. Please change your eating habits.

Philip K. Howard: Four ways to fix a broken legal system | Video on TED.com

Such an IMPORTANT presentation first, to listen to (20 well invested minutes!), then share EVERYWHERE, and finally to discuss with everyone! You'll hear why from the very beginning of the presentation: Philip K. Howard: Four ways to fix a broken legal system | Video on TED.com

This Mardi Gras_ do as the Haïtians do, epicuriously!

Soupe Joumou
Haiti’s pot of gold
By Ellen Kanner
February 2, 2010


(Editor’s note: This piece first appeared on the Huffington Post.)

When a man pours you his soup, he pours you his soul, even when it’s soup cooked up on a hot plate. Maybe especially then. My friend Marcel celebrated New Year’s Day by making Soupe Joumou, the beloved soup with which Haitians start the new year. For Marcel, it was not enough to make soup — he had to feed everyone he knew.

When I arrived, his tiny apartment was flooded with afternoon light and was so jammed, I couldn’t see the host for all the guests clustered around, cradling soup bowls, talking, eating, laughing.
Featured recipe

* Vegan Soupe Joumou

Finally, I found Marcel his makeshift kitchen, holding court and presiding over the soup pot.

I gave him a kiss and picked up a bowl.

“It has meat,” he warned, remembering I’m a meat-free kind of girl.

“I’ll eat around it.”

Vegan Soupe Joumou
We looked at each other. He beamed and ladled it up from a battered aluminum pot, rich and golden, like liquid sunshine.

Soupe joumou is the triumph of spirit over tyranny, heart over privation and a damn fine way to warm body and soul. This is a soup tapping into the collective unconscious of a people, evoking stronger feelings than Proust’s Madeleine. I wasn’t going to let some bits of beef get in the way of that.

We all love to ring in the new year with its promise of new beginnings, but in Haiti, it’s especially cause for joy. New Year’s Day is Independence Day, the celebration of that New Year’s Day in 1804, when Haitians ended over a century of bloody rule by the French and were no longer colonial slaves but a free people in their own homeland.

Haitians celebrated by eating what had been forbidden them — meat, cabbage and squash, the latter two grown on their own island. Haitian slaves had cooked these foods for their French masters, while they themselves had survived solely on rations of salt cod and lemonade.

Like Hoppin’ John, the new year’s dish invented by slaves in the south, Soupe Joumou is a dish that sustains and is sustainable. It’s made from what is local and available. The Haitians adapted the soup from their French masters, heating it up with habaneros and ginger and making their own. Like hopping john, some eat it on New Year’s Day for good luck. Others, like Marcel, eat and serve it knowing — and honoring — its history. And as with all things Haitian, there is some myth. The soup is said to honor Papa Loko, the Vodou god of the ancient African spirit. Yellow is the color that honors him. In any case, Soupe Joumou is belly-filling and soul-lifting all at once.
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Since Haiti’s earthquake, Marcel, our gracious host of just a few weeks ago, looks crumpled, hollowed out. Most of us in Miami do. Haiti is but 700 miles away. Or it is literally next door. Haitians make up a rich part of our community and though we may not personally have lost family, as Marcel has, we all have Haitian friends, Haitian ties. People burst into tears on the street. Co-workers who once barely got past, “Hi, how’s it going?” now embrace. There has been an outpouring of relief effort here, along with an outpouring of grief. Those efforts will be all the more important in the coming weeks and months, when the rest of the world might be inclined to forget or suffer compassion fatigue. As if caring could ever tire you.

Soupe Joumou epitomizes for me Marcel and all the people of Haiti, who take what little they have, make it delicious and offer it to you with all their heart. It’s time for us, who have so much, to do the same.

At this time of crisis, as President Obama said, “We are reminded of our common humanity.” Please donate to Partners in Health, the American Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders or whatever relief organization moves you.