Ratatouille goodness plus a cinema to savour
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Karen Hamilton
November 18, 2010
My little family’s been hit with no less than 4 attacks by the flu season in the past month, so we’ve been eating a lot of comfort food lately. My favourite comfort foods lie within the realm of soup: a bowlful of shio from Ramen Santouka; chicken congee from Congee Noodle House; wonton soup from Yopo Cafe; and homemade tinolang manok.
This therapy would not be complete without plopping in front of the TV, tissue box in hand, in front of a feel-good movie – and more often than not, my selection is animated. In the weeks of my convalescence, How to Train a Dragon, Finding Nemo, and Ratatouille have gotten me through some of the worst of the spells. By this Monday, hopefully in a state of full recovery, I will be watching Ratatouille again – with ratatouille and not soup in hand – at Vancity Theatre’s Cinema to Savour screening. All proceeds benefit the Chefs’ Table Society of British Columbia.
Cinema to Savour presents Ratatouille
Monday, November 22, 6-8pm
Vancity Theatre & Film Centre
1181 Seymour Street | Vancouver
Tickets: $55 general, $15 children
More info on chefstablesociety.com
I’ve been working directly and indirectly with the Chefs’ Table Society for the past few years. They’re the guys that run the awesome Spot Prawn Festival each May and the ones that produced the Vancouver Cooks 2 cookbook (which recently won Gold in its category at the Canadian Cookbook awards). On Monday, board member Chef Scott Jaeger of Pear Tree Restaurant and friends will be serving up yummy French-inspired finger food while the film of the same name is shown on the big screen. I thought it’d therefore be fun to share a ratatouille recipe and offer a Ratatouille prize pack in advance of this event.
Our Meatless Wednesdays ratatouille recipe
When I took up David Suzuki’s Nature Challenge a few years ago, we picked one day per week where we ate no meat. The photo above shows our first attempt cooking the ratatouille that we often ate on our Meatless Wednesdays, based on this recipe from our favourite Cook’s Illustrated cookbook. We adjusted the scale of the recipe to serve two, eaten alongside hunks of French bread and a bottle of pinot.
Ingredients
- 1-2 eggplants, cut into large cubes (we used 2 because I’m an eggplant fiend!)
- 1 large zucchini, cut into large cubes
- 1 small-medium onion , chopped
- 2 cloves garlic , minced
- 1 lb of your choice of very ripe tomatoes, peeled and sized like the eggplant and zucchini
- 1 tablespoon parsley, chopped
- 1 tablespoon basil, chopped
- 1/2 tablespoon thyme, minced
- Olive oil, salt and pepper
Directions
- Salt eggplant pieces generously in a colander situated in your sink or over something to catch liquid. Leave for up to 3 hours, then rinse away the salt. Dry eggplant extremely thoroughly…you can’t overdo this step. They might shrink or shrivel some…that’s okay. We used clean dishcloths to extract the moisture instead of wasting paper towels. [Skip this salting process at your peril - you might need to if you're rushed, but the trade-off is a ton more mush in your dish.]
- Preheat oven to 500F. Line 2 baking sheets with foil.
- Toss eggplant and zucchini thoroughly in olive oil, then spread the pieces in a single layer across your baking sheets. Sprinkle with salt. Roast in oven for 30-40 minutes or until well-browned and tender. Every 10 minutes, open the oven and stir the veggies on the rack. Halfway through the roast, switch and rotate the position of your baking sheets. Turn off oven and leave them in there or set aside.
- Heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a heavy-bottomed roasting pan or Dutch oven.
- Cook and stir onion in pan over low heat until golden brown, 15 to 20 minutes.
- Add garlic and cook for 30 seconds or till the pot exudes garlicky goodness.
- Add tomatoes and cook for 5 minutes or until they start breaking apart.
- Add eggplant and zucchini and combine until just heated through, about 5 minutes.
- Stir in herbs and add salt and pepper to taste.
Share your “Ratatouille moment” and win some Ratatouille
I had a Ratatouille moment 2 years ago when I tucked into the crab fritter at Atlanta’s Bacchanalia Restaurant. It was such a transcendent experience for me – triggering a flood of fond childhood memories – that the taste of this dish will never be forgotten. If I could dine every night at Bacchanalia, I would.
Comment on this post describing your own Ratatouille moment and you could win:
- A copy of Disney PIXAR’s Ratatouille (your choice of DVD or Blu-Ray format)
- 2 passes for the Cinema to Savour screening of Ratatouille on Monday, November 22nd
This Ratatouille prize pack is worth $150. The winner will be randomly selected (Congratulations, Brad!).
That gives you 2 days to submit your Ratatouille moment. Looking forward to reading about the dishes that spoke to you!
Categories: Dinner, Events, Food, Recipes, Savoury
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Articles by Karen Hamilton
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A few years back, I was in Japan and decided to stop for a quick lunch. I ordered myself a omerice. My Ratatouille moment was more of an overall experience as soon as the dish arrived. Breaking into the omelette brought back memories of repeatedly watching my Tampopo VHS as a kid. And that first bite… I was all
and then went to all 
I was enjoying dinner at a friend’s house recently and part of the meal was Bouillabaisse. The moment I tasted it, I immediately had fond memories of having the same dish in Tofino, overlooking the water. It was amazing and made me want to go back to Tofino to enjoy the fresh seafood there!
My moment was when I was studying at university. I was staying with my grandfather who was from China and knew little of cooking Western food which I was accustomed to. For the first week I didn’t eat much because I just wasn’t used to it all. After that in one of the first moments of my own independence I went out to buy food that I was used to. One of the fondest memories of just eating a normal chicken breast and just reminding me of home only a couple of weeks earlier. Sure not a huge time gap, but often food is what makes it easier to adapt to home.
When I was a child, there was a bakery in the neighourhood that sold the most amazing whipped cream donuts that were so light and mouthwatering. When that bakery shut down, I could never find any donut like that anywhere, which was really sad.
Then by a fluke, one day I came upon a bakery in Burnaby which sells not only amazing cakes, but some amazing whipped cream donuts. They may not be exactly the same as the ones I had as a child, but they are pretty darn close. Really brings back memories of the past. That’s my ratatouille moment.
My Ratatouille moment was when I found a restaurant that advertised a menu that featured my favorite 1987 culinary film: Babette’s Feast that won the Foreign Film Oscar that year. It was a gourmet’s dream come true as my girlfriend and I sat through four hours of a French gourmet feast of turtle soup, quail in puff pastry shell, caviar with buckcake blinis, cheese with fruit and rum cake w/dried figs paired with wine, champagne, sherry, red wine, cognac at the appropriate point of the meal. There is nothing better than a great meal, paired with esquisite wine and fabulous friends!
Anybody who knows me well know that Ratatouille, the movie, is a harmonious marriage of three things that I love: food, French culture, Disney/Pixar films.
I try to relive a Ratatouille moment at least once a week. My heritage is Vietnamese, and as most foodies will know, Vietnamese cuisine is a huge part of the country’s culture, and is strongly influenced by French cuisine. I’ll pick up a Vietnamese sub for lunch, stew up some pho over the weekend.
Every time I take a bite into a quality Vietnamese dish, I find blissful “Ratatoille moment”.
In the world of Physics, a moment it defined as a turning effect produced by a force acting at a distance on an object. With that definition in mind, I will describe my ratatouille moment.
I met with a friend at a well loved Vancouver restaurant. The clouds hung low, pressing my spirits down, so I ordered the ratatouille in hopes of being transported, as Anton Ego was, to happier times and sunnier climes.
The ratatouille arrived in a six inch square ceramic dish, steaming and fragrant with garlic. I dug in. Heavenly. I chewed on an entire clove of garlic. Ok. A little strong. A few more cloves appeared and I decided to work around them. After the last bite, I stared down at 17 garlic cloves. I had NEVER eaten a single dish with that much garlic in it. I couldn’t help think if I was secretly a vampire, my true identity would be mortally exposed.
At a distance, the 17 garlic cloves, covered in the red sheen of tomato and olive oil, produced a force in my mind, pushing aside all other memories of previous ratatouille meals. According to my memory, I have only eaten ratatouille once, and it came with 17 garlic cloves… make that 18 because I ate one…
And we have a winner: congratulations, Brad! I’ll email you the details. Meet you on Monday at Cinema to Savour to give you the Ratatouille DVD in person.
Thanks all of you for sharing your Ratatouille moments. I loved reading about your stories and hope you did too.
How exciting! Thanks Karen!!!
congrats Brad,.Ratatouille is really a great movie for every family my kids enjoy watching it at home while eating some stuff which was cook by my wife