Baked Ratatouille Goats Cheese Food

HOW TO MAKE RATATOUILLE

Steps:

• Vegetables are the bedrock of French cuisine, the foundation upon which all is built. Although cooking bibles like "The Escoffier Cookbook" and "Larousse Gastronomique" may not have as many recipes centering on artichokes and carrots as they do on chicken or beef, it is only because vegetables suffuse the canon and the kitchen, from the broths and sauces that serve as the base of elaborate dishes, to the garnishes that finish them.But there are a handful of dishes where vegetables are the stars. Ratatouille is beloved for its silky, olive oil-imbued vegetables, which are saturated with the summery scents of garlic and herbs. By mastering it, you will gain not only deeper insights into how to cook the vegetables in the recipe, but you will also be able to apply that knowledge to other vegetables, making you a better cook all around.Unlike much of French cuisine, ratatouille does not have a set recipe or precise technique. There are as many versions as there are cooks, each slightly different in method and ingredients.The most traditional recipes call for cooking each vegetable separately in a pot on the stove until well browned, layering everything back into the pot with a generous amount of olive oil and some tomatoes, and then letting it all slowly stew. Most cooks agree that this is the best way to ensure that the vegetables are cooked to perfection before all are combined, and the flavors left to meld.However, all that standing at the stove stirring vegetables can become tedious. Even "Larousse Gastronomique" discards that method in its official recipe, throwing everything into the same pan in stages without the benefit of that individual browning.But there is another, better way around the tedium: using your oven. This is what many contemporary French cooks do, and it's the method on which our recipe is based. All the vegetables are bathed in olive oil and roasted separately on baking pans until well browned. Then they're mixed together in one pan, covered with more oil and some tomato, and cooked again until everything condenses in flavor and practically falls apart, soaking up the good oil and tomato almost like a confit.That time spent steeping in good oil makes ratatouille one of the rare vegetable dishes that improves as it sits. It is best made in advance, and you can be flexible with the way you cook it, roasting the vegetables in stages as time allows, then combining them all even days later. It is also wonderfully versatile at the table, making a fine starter, side dish or main course, one that can be eaten warm, at room temperature or cold.
• A slowly cooked stew of eggplant, onions, peppers, summer squash and tomatoes has been simmering on hearths around the Mediterranean since the 16th century, when tomatoes, peppers and squash from the Americas met the eggplant, onion and olive oil already in residence.This basic combination of summer vegetables takes different forms throughout the region. In Catalonia, it is simmered until it is almost jamlike and called samfaina. In Turkey, it is known as turlu and may also contain potatoes, okra and green beans. Lebanon, Egypt and Greece all have versions. In Provençe, it is scented with herbs and garlic and called ratatouille.The term, which came into use in the 19th century, is derived from the French verbs ratouiller and tatouiller, both meaning to stir up. And the pleasing, percussive-sounding word captures the essence of this dish: a stirring of several vegetables that have been cooked separately before being combined.Originally, a ratatouille could be any kind of simple or coarse stew. It could include meat, or it could do without it. Nineteenth-century French military slang referred to the dish as a "rata." The first written mentions of the all-vegetable stew from Nice that we know today, also called sauté à la Niçoise, came in the early 20th century.But by 1930, ratatouille had become entrenched in the Provençal repertoire. Henri Heyraud, the author of "La Cuisine à Nice," described it as a ragoût of eggplant, zucchini, peppers and tomatoes. The use of the word ragoût here is fitting; it means to revive the taste, which is exactly what ratatouille does, giving cooked vegetables and herbs new verve when they are combined and cooked again.As Provençal cuisine became fashionable all over France (and to a lesser degree in Britain and the United States) in the latter part of the 20th century, the popularity of ratatouille grew. It has since become a summer staple to serve with simple grilled meats, or as a main course in its own right, with the requisite bottle of rosé.Above, "Still Life With Flowers and Vegetables" by Caravaggio (1571-1610).
• Sharp knives You need a chef's knife and paring knife to prepare the vegetables. And a well-sharpened knife will make all that chopping go noticeably faster than a dull knife.Baking sheets The vegetables in this ratatouille are roasted individually before they are all combined. Ideally, you will have at least four large rimmed metal baking sheets for doing so. You can get away with fewer, but you will need to cook the vegetables in batches.Large baking dish You could heap all of the vegetables onto a baking sheet when it is time to cook them together. But a large, shallow, attractive casserole that can travel straight to the table is an appealing way to serve the dish.Wirecutter, a product recommendations website owned by The New York Times Company, has guides to the best chef's knives, paring knives, baking sheets and casserole dishes.
• In our version of this classic Provençal dish, vegetables are covered in olive oil and roasted separately, then together, until they collapse into a soft, herb-scented stew. Ratatouille takes time to prepare and tastes better the next day, so plan ahead. For that reason, it's an ideal make-ahead dish for a gathering.
• There are many ways you can cut the vegetables for ratatouille, but a combination of slices, rounds and spears gives the stew an attractive look and some textural contrast. (Brush up on your technique with our guide to basic knife skills.) Eggplant is like the meat of the ratatouille, adding a savory heft and richness.You can use any type of eggplant you like, though if the skin is tough and leathery, consider peeling it first. If you'd prefer to keep the skin on, which gives ratatouille a nice texture, look for tender, young, thin-skinned eggplant. In France, cooks often use large Italian purple-black eggplants. But you can also use graffiti, Japanese, Chinese or white eggplant varieties, or use a combination of them for the most interesting and diverse texture.To prepare the eggplants, slice off the top and bottom from each. Lay an eggplant on its side and cut it in half, then cut it into 1-inch chunks or spears. Repeat with remaining eggplant.Peppers give a jammy sweetness and fruitiness to the stew pot. Choose a combination of red, yellow and orange bell peppers, or other sweet peppers. Green bell peppers, which are harvested earlier than the red, orange and yellow ones, have a more pungent, grassy flavor and less sweetness; they are not what you want for ratatouille.To prepare the peppers, lay one on its side and slice off the top and bottom. Halve the pepper, remove the seeds and cut out the white veins. Slice into 1/4-inch-thick strips. Repeat with remaining peppers. Alternatively, after trimming and seeding the peppers, you can cut them into 1/4-inch thick rounds.Zucchini is soft, sweet and very succulent when slowly stewed in a ratatouille.You can use any variety of zucchini you find - the fresher, the better. A mix of colors (yellow, dark green and pale green) makes for a particularly pretty dish. Always keep the skins on zucchini, or they will completely fall apart as they cook.To prepare the zucchini, slice off the tops and bottoms. Lay each zucchini on its side. Cutting horizontally, slice into 1/4-inch-thick rounds.Onions add a caramelized sweetness to ratatouille. Large Spanish onions or white onions (which have a high water content and some bite) are best here. Keep in mind that as the onions cook, they sweeten, so unless you want a particularly sweet ratatouille, avoid red onions, Vidalias and other high-sugar onions.To prepare the onions, halve them from the stem to the root, then peel. Next, lay them flat. For ratatouille, aim for 1/4-inch-thick slices - that is, unless you want more pronounced onion pieces in the dish, in which case you can cut thicker pieces. The thicker the slices, the longer the onions will take to roast.
• Ratatouille is a freer and easier recipe than much of what you'll find in the canon of French cuisine, requiring you to spend more time choosing the ingredients than actually fiddling with them. That said, there are some techniques that will help you get the most deeply flavored dish. Blanching tomatoes helps loosen the skin, making them easier to peel without losing any of their precious, sweet juices. The trick is remove them from the boiling water before their flesh is cooked. You want to cook only the skin.Choose tomatoes that are ripe but still firm; soft tomatoes won't hold up to the peeling and blanching. You can use any variety as long as it is flavorful and sweet. However, using large round tomatoes rather than small plum tomatoes makes the blanching, peeling and seeding go more quickly.To begin, bring a medium pot of water to a boil. One at a time, drop the whole tomatoes into the boiling water. Cover and let boil for 10 seconds. Using a slotted spoon or tongs, immediately remove the tomatoes from the pot and plunge them into a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking. Hold a cooled tomato in your hand and use a small paring knife to cut out the stem. From there, you can start to peel the skin. It should slip right off.Cut the peeled tomato in half around its equator. Set up a bowl with a mesh sieve sitting on top. Squeeze the tomato halves over the sieve so the seeds are caught in the mesh and the juices pool in the bowl. The seeds should slip out easily, but you can use your fingers to pry any stubborn ones from the tomato flesh. Discard the seeds in the sieve. Dice the tomato pulp and add it to the bowl with their juices. Repeat peeling and seeding with the remaining tomatoes.• When you are making ratatouille, the quality of the olive oil is as important as that of the vegetables. Make sure to choose a good extra-virgin oil, preferably from France. You'll be using a lot of it here.• If you don't have four baking sheets, roast the vegetables on individual sheets in succession. Transfer the cooked vegetables to a bowl as they finish cooking. This takes longer, since you can't roast all the vegetables at once. (Likewise, if you can't fit all of the baking sheets into your oven at once, cook them in batches.)• If your ratatouille emerges from the oven with a lot of excess liquid in the pan, pour the liquid into a saucepan and reduce it over the stove. Then add it back to the dish once it is reduced, to take advantage of its flavor.• Try the traditional method: Instead of roasting each vegetable on baking sheets, cook them on the stovetop. Heat your largest skillet on the stove, adding a film of oil, and cook each vegetable separately (and the onions, smashed garlic and herbs together). Cook in batches if necessary, so as not to crowd the pan. (If you crowd the pan, the vegetables will steam rather than brown, and cook unevenly.) As the vegetables soften and brown, transfer them to a bowl. (You can add all the different kinds of cooked vegetables to the same bowl.) Add more oil with each batch of vegetables, and season with salt and pepper as you go. When all of the vegetables are cooked, transfer them back to the skillet, along with the tomatoes, grated garlic and a good dose of olive oil. Simmer, uncovered, until they meld together, about 30 to 45 minutes.• You can make this dish in stages, if that suits your schedule. Roast the vegetables separately a day or two before combining them, and then refrigerate them. 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. Once the dish is cooked and cooled, transfer it to a container, adding a little oil if necessary, and refrigerate for up to five days. When you're ready to serve, bring it to room temperature (this takes about an hour) and drizzle with a tiny bit more olive oil. You can also reheat it on the stove or in the microwave to serve it warm.
• Photography Food styling: Alison Attenborough. Prop styling: Beverley Hyde. Additional photography: Karsten Moran for The New York Times. Additional styling: Jade Zimmerman. Video Food styling: Chris Barsch and Jade Zimmerman. Art direction: Alex Brannian. Prop styling: Catherine Pearson. Director of photography: James Herron. Camera operators: Tim Wu and Zack Sainz. Editing: Will Lloyd and Adam Saewitz. Additional editing: Meg Felling.
• All Chapters
• Coq au Vin

SHEET-PAN RATATOUILLE WITH GOAT CHEESE AND OLIVES

Steps:

• Heat oven to 425 degrees, and arrange two racks in the top and bottom thirds.
• On one rimmed 13-by-17-inch sheet pan, toss together onion slices, zucchini, 1/4 cup oil, 3 thyme springs, 2 rosemary sprigs, 3 garlic cloves and 1/2 teaspoon salt.
• On a second rimmed baking sheet, toss together eggplant, red peppers, 1/4 cup oil, 3 thyme sprigs, 2 rosemary sprig, 3 garlic cloves and 3/4 teaspoon salt.
• Place one tray on the top rack, and a second on the bottom rack of the oven. Roast both for 40 minutes, stirring vegetables two or three times.
• Add tomatoes to the baking sheet with eggplant and peppers, then continue to roast until the tomatoes burst and the zucchini turn deeply golden brown, another 20 to 25 minutes. The vegetables will become very caramelized, and that's a good thing, particularly with the zucchini and onions.
• Transfer zucchini and onions to the baking sheet with eggplant, mix well, and spread in an even layer (it will just fit). Drizzle vegetables with another 1 tablespoon oil, then sprinkle goat cheese and olives over the top. Roast until goat cheese is soft and warmed through, 5 to 10 minutes.
• Transfer vegetables to a serving platter, drizzle with a little more oil and squeeze juice from the one of the lemon wedges over the top. Garnish with basil leaves. Serve hot or warm, with more lemon wedges on the side.

EASY VEGETABLE RATATOUILLE

Steps:

• Preheat oven to 425 (220 C) degrees.
• Peel the eggplant, if desired, or leave some of the skin on in strips. Trim off the stem and sliced into quarters lengthwise, then slice into 1-inch thick half moons.
• Put the eggplant in a large bowl with the zucchini, bell pepper and onion. Drizzle with the olive oil, 1 teaspoon salt and the chopped thyme and toss together.
• Pour the tomato puree into a 4-5 quart casserole or baking dish. Stir in the remaining ½ teaspoon salt, garlic, red and black pepper and spread over the bottom of the dish.
• Arrange the vegetables in the dish in one layer. Top with the sliced tomatoes and thyme sprigs. Bake 30-35 minutes. The juices should be bubbling and the eggplant tender when pierced with a the tip of a knife. Remove the thyme stems (you can crumble the leaves over the dish first).
• Sprinkle the goat cheese over the ratatouille and drizzle with the pesto. Serve warm or at room temperature.

ROASTED RATATOUILLE & GOAT'S CHEESE TART

Steps:

• Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Toss the aubergine, courgette, pepper and onion together with the garlic, olive oil and some seasoning. Tip onto a large baking tray (you may need to use 2 trays) and roast for 20 mins. Toss through the tomatoes and roast for a further 15-20 mins or until the vegetables are tender and beginning to caramelise.
• Meanwhile, roll out the pastry on a lightly floured surface and use to line a 23cm loose-bottomed tart tin. Chill for 30 mins.
• While the vegetables cool, reduce oven to 190C/170C fan/gas 5. Prick the base of the tart case with a fork, line with baking parchment and fill with baking beans. Pop on a baking tray and bake for 15 mins, then remove the beans and parchment. Bake for 10-15 mins more until the pastry is lightly golden.
• Reduce oven to 160C/140C fan/gas 3. Squeeze the garlic from their skins into a jug and mash with a little salt to form a paste. Slowly whisk in the cream, followed by the eggs and some seasoning. Toss the basil through the cooled vegetables, then tip two-thirds into the pastry case, spreading out to an even layer. Crumble over three-quarters of the goat's cheese, then pour over the cream mix. Top with the remaining veg and cheese. Bake for 40-50 mins until the tart is just set, with a slight wobble in the centre. Serve warm for lunch or cold on a picnic, scattered with extra basil leaves, and some toasted pine nuts, if you like.

RATATOUILLE WITH GOAT'S CHEESE & HERBY CRUMBLE

Steps:

• Cut the aubergines and courgettes into thick slices, no thinner than 2cm/3⁄4in, then cut all the slices across in half. Set aside. Cut the peppers in half, remove and discard the seeds, then cut the peppers into bite-sized chunks. Set aside.
• Heat 5 tablespoons of the olive oil in a large pan, add the onions and garlic and gently fry for 8-10 minutes. Add the aubergines, courgettes and peppers and fry for a further 10 minutes. Tip in the chopped tomatoes, season well, cover and cook for 20 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat, stir in the chopped basil and leave aside to cool.
• Meanwhile, for the crumble, put the bread into a food processor and blend to fine crumbs. Add the pesto, herbs, the remaining olive oil and plenty of seasoning, then blend again.
• Cut the goat's cheese into large bitesized pieces and fold through the ratatouille. Spoon into a 2 litre/31⁄2 pint ovenproof dish. Sprinkle the herby crumb mixture over the top of the ratatouille.
• Preheat the oven to 190C/Gas 5/fan oven 170C and bake the crumble for 25 minutes until golden.

RATATOUILLE AND GOAT CHEESE SALAD WITH PESTO VINAIGRETTE

Steps:

• Make vinaigrette:
• In a blender or small food processor blend all vinaigrette ingredients with salt and pepper to taste until smooth. Vinaigrette may be made 1 day ahead and chilled, covered. Bring vinaigrette to room temperature before using on salads.
• Make ratatouille:
• Cut eggplant, zucchini, yellow squash, and bell peppers into 1/4-inch dice. In a large heavy skillet cook eggplant in 1 tablespoon oil over moderate heat, stirring, until tender and transfer to a bowl. In skillet cook zucchini, yellow squash, and onion with salt and pepper to taste in 1 tablespoon oil over moderate heat, stirring, until crisp-tender, 3 to 5 minutes, and transfer to bowl. Cook bell peppers in remaining teaspoon oil in same manner and transfer to bowl. Stir in tomato purée, garlic, herbs, and salt and pepper to taste and cool ratatouille completely.
• Preheat oven to 375°F. and cut a large sheet of parchment paper into eight 5-to-6 inch squares.
• On a work surface put a 3-inch metal pastry ring (at least 1 1/2 high) in middle of 1 parchment square and fill it with 1/3 cup ratatouille, pressing evenly and tightly into bottom. Cut goat cheese into 8 equal pieces and flatten each piece to form a 3-inch disk. Top ratatouille in ring with goat cheese disk, pressing lightly at edges to cover ratatouille completely. Transfer round on parchment square to a large baking sheet and remove ring. Make 7 more rounds in same manner with remaining parchment squares, ratatouille, and goat cheese. Bake rounds in middle of oven 8 to 10 minutes, or until heated through.
• While rounds are baking, in a large bowl toss mesclun with 1/4 cup vinaigrette and divide among 8 plates.
• With a spatula transfer a round to center of each salad. Drizzle each salad with about 1 teaspoon vinaigrette and garnish with tomatoes.