For real. My favorite movie EVER. So much Pixar love!
Now that I've told everyone that my favorite movie involves a little blue animated rat, maybe we should move beyond my classy, intelligent, and highly refined movie tastes and get back to the food.
Ratatouille is always a colorful dish, but when you're using heirloom eggplants and tomatoes and green and yellow squashes, all from the farmer's market (although not entirely fresh, due to the aforementioned time at the bottom of the vegetable drawer) it's particularly beautiful. So there's a lot of photographs in this post.
Everything should be in approximately bite-sized pieces. You can make ratatouille on the grill or in the oven as well, but I usually sauté everything, mostly because I'm lazy.
Always start with onions. Then add the eggplant. When it's looking pretty well cooked, throw in the squash.
It's good to add some fresh herbs somewhere in there - I was feeling REALLY lazy, and just tossed in some garlic. But thyme or basil or marjoram or any number of things always makes a good addition, particularly if your ingredients aren't at their peak. This is a good recipe to use for slightly inferior produce, although luckily I didn't have that problem.
The tomatoes go in last. I just stirred them in and made sure they were incorporated, then turned off the heat. They don't need to get overly mushy or disappear into the mixture - they hold more flavor (and color!) if they're just barely cooked.
My real stroke of genius was plating the ratatouille onto some goat cheese covered toast (Purple Haze and pain au levain, both from the Metropolitan Bakery). The sharp goat cheese was the perfect compliment to the sweet, tomato-y ratatouille (although, is there anything NOT made better by goat cheese?) and the toast added a lovely crunchy texture. Delicious.
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