Late Summer Ratatouille - Ratatouille Recipe - Dining Alfresco (2024)

FAQs

What time of year do you eat ratatouille? ›

Ratatouille, a rustic French vegetable stew, is the perfect bridge between summer and fall. While eggplant, zucchini and peppers can be purchased any time of year, they are at their most flavorful when they are in season locally.

Ratatouille requires ripe vegetables, a liberal hand with the olive oil, and patience: only long, slow cooking will give you the creamy soft vegetables, and intense, almost jammy sauce that sings of the sun. Anything else is just plain vegetable stew.

When you are ready to return to them, combine with the tomatoes, remaining herbs and oil and cook for at least an hour to finish. Or make the entire dish ahead. It is best to make your ratatouille one or two days before serving so the flavors have a chance to meld and mellow.

But the dish is so versatile it can be served hot or at room temperature. Chopped up and hot, it also makes delicious omelet filling. Many families have the ratatouille as the main course and a salad and crusty bread are the side dishes.

Serve Ratatouille as a Side Dish to Meats

Ratatouille goes well with all kinds of grilled meats—I love it with flank steak, lamb, and veal, especially. A gourmet burger, served open face. Yes. A good steaky fish.

It starts with ripe, in-season produce. In Western hemispheres, eggplants, onions, red peppers, tomatoes, and zucchini are plump, plentiful, and actually taste like something, summer through early fall. Make and eat ratatouille in abundance then.

He's enthralled, consumed, obsessed with the idea of someday becoming a great chef. Remy has a problem, though: He's a rat. A Parisian rat with a heightened sense of smell, a discerning palate and a natural skill in the culinary arts … but, still a rat.

Fun fact: the signature dish Rémy serves at the end of Ratatouille isn't technically a ratatouille; it's a tian, which is an artful arrangement of sliced summer vegetables baked over a tomato and pepper sauce.

Ratatouille is a classic French dish from the region of Provence that consists of eggplant, onions, bell peppers, zucchini, tomatoes, garlic, and herbs that are quickly seared and then gently stewed. The result is a creamy delicious mixture of fresh vegetables that serves as a wonderful main or side dish.

Should ratatouille be served with rice? ›

How to Serve Ratatouille. Ratatouille can be the main dish with a side of crusty bread or a salad accompanying a meal, but it's also good served over polenta, pasta, mashed potatoes, quinoa, and rice. Use it as a filling for omelets and tarts or as a side for grilled or roasted meats.

'” This “peasant dish” can be made in many different ways, but the traditional ratatouille recipe includes eggplant, zucchini, bell pepper, onion, garlic, tomatoes, and regional herbs. In the movie, Remy's ratatouille version is actually called confit byaldi.

One of the best ways to enjoy ratatouille is as a side dish. It goes well with grilled meats like chicken, pork, or beef as well as stewed and sauced recipes. The rich tomato sauce and fresh herbs add a burst of flavor that complements the smoky, savory taste of roasted, stewed or grilled meat.

The teeming summer gardens of Mediterranean France are the inspiration for and source of ratatouille, a dish whose name is taken from two related words: ratouiller, meaning to agitate or stir a liquid, and tatouiller, meaning to beat (as in the drumbeat called the tattoo) or to shake.

The word ratatouille derives from the Occitan ratatolha and is related to the French ratouiller and tatouiller, expressive forms of the verb touiller, meaning "to stir up". From the late 18th century, in French, it merely indicated a coarse stew.

With its summery combination of aubergines, courgettes, peppers and tomatoes, ratatouille is a beloved classic of southern French cuisine, particularly in Nice. But this simple, seasonal stew is more complex than it may seem at first glance.

Whatever the case, ratatouille is the signature dish of Nice, the major city of Provence. It is a good example of “peasant cooking,” food characteristic of a rural countryside that has been elevated to the status of fine dining, as presented in the eponymous Pixar film of 2007.

It pairs well with bread, pasta, roasted meats, seafood and more. Here are my top picks for what to serve with ratatouille. Usually served in a casserole dish, ratatouille can also be made as a chunky stew. (Find my favorite easy ratatouille recipe here.)