Moroccan Misgivings

I was back in California for a few weeks during the winter holidays, which gave my West Coast baking group an opportunity to celebrate Misgivings - our version of Thanksgiving (kindly delayed until my participation was possible) where instead of being thankful, everyone talks about all the shit life puts them through, and we eat delicious, non-turkey-and-potatoes food. This year we went Moroccan.

My fellow made a nice eggplant thing we found on the internet (authentic!), and our first challenge was deciding which type of eggplants were appropriate for a Moroccan dish. The Berkeley Bowl has an entire eggplant section, so it was a difficult decision. And I don't remember which kind we ended up with, except that it was one of the skinnier ones, not the fat kind. And I doubt it mattered.

While he was doing that, I made a chunky cake, also from the internet.

Then this lovely lady came by and made homemade pita bread, which was so good that we ate the half-cooked test pita and the slightly burned test pita, and almost didn't have enough pita for dinner.

And another lovely lady grated carrots until both her hands hurt, for her fresh carrot salad; and still another lovely lady made a warm, chunky couscous salad; and we wrestled with the chicken-phyllo dough pie, coming to the conclusion that phyllo was not meant to be in unbroken pieces; and I didn't take very many pictures because I was peeling the phyllo sheets apart.

Bowser helped by imitating a kitchen island.

Finally everything - pita bread, coucous, chicken thing (covered in powdered sugar and cinnamon), eggplant, carrot salad, and cake - was done.

So we took out all our misgivings on the food.

And after dinner we were treated to this lovely little video, made by one of our dinner guests and featuring beautiful felted creatures made by the creator of the very same carrot salad that appears in this blog post.

Ratatouille

I've been cooking a lot lately, but even so I found some tomatoes, zucchinis, and eggplants threatening to get mushy at the bottom of my vegetable drawer. Luckily there's a way to use up all those things in one go, and at the same time pay homage to my favorite movie.

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.