Olivia Potts

Ratatouille: a versatile Provençal one-pot

  • From Spectator Life

There aren’t many veggie stews that can lay claim to being immortalised in popular culture. Fewer still that could then complain about being grossly misrepresented. But then ratatouille is no ordinary vegetable stew.

Ratatouille is a Provençal dish, made by gently cooking aubergine, courgette, and red peppers, with a tomato sauce flavoured with onion, garlic and herbs. It is, in many ways, extremely simple. But for all its simplicity, it remains the subject of confusion.

If you watch Pixar’s Ratatouille, you will see the terrifying food critic, Anton Ego, reduced to a Proustian state of rapture when served what we are told is ratatouille, making him recall his childhood and his mother’s cooking. However, that beautiful pile of perfectly sliced and layered vegetables that we see on screen is not the traditional ratatouille. It is instead confit byaldi, a variation on the more rustic ratatouille, created by French chef Michel Guérard, and made famous by Californian super-chef, Thomas Keller. Non-coincidentally, Keller served as a food consultant on the film, and the producer Brad Lewis, spent time interning at Keller’s The French Laundry. While Guérard and Keller’s version is a dish in its own right, it is far closer to a tian, another variation on the original dish, which finely slices and layers the various vegetables, in a circular pattern.

This is probably because, whisper it, ratatouille is not that pretty. Using the traditionally rough-cut vegetables makes the whole thing look less Michelin-starred and more, well, like a stew. But it is delicious, significantly easier, and runs no risk of drying out. It’s also a dish that you can make on the stove, rather than needing the oven.

Many will tell you that the vegetables need to be cooked individually, to preserve their character and flavour. I disagree: the joy of the dish is the melding of the flavours, and the dish improves with the more time they have to get to know each other.

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Olivia Potts
Written by
Olivia Potts
Olivia Potts is a former criminal barrister who retrained as a pastry chef. She co-hosts The Spectator’s Table Talk podcast and writes Spectator Life's The Vintage Chef column. A chef and food writer, she was winner of the Fortnum and Mason's debut food book award in 2020 for her memoir A Half Baked Idea.

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