By this time in our three-decade-plus marriage I know too well what my spouse refuses to eat. Well, there’s no disguising okra. But I can expect the classic eggplant-dominating casserole ratatouille will find favor once and sometimes twice a summer.
The key is precooking the eggplant separately — food journalist Mark Bittman says, “There are few foods worse than undercooked eggplant” — even saving time while prepping and starting to simmer the remaining ingredients.
Setting the eggplant for success relies on my simplification of a Cook’s Illustrated“America’s Test Kitchen” report, “You Should Be Microwaving Eggplant.” Ratatouille generally is baked, but I prefer Bittman’s stovetop method for speed, down to now maybe 45 minutes.
Adapted from Bittman’s book, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. Serves 6-8.
- About 1.5 pounds eggplant, preferably small/young, either globe or long Asian, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch chunks
- 1 large onion, peeled and roughly chopped
- 1 Tablespoon olive oil OR 1/2 cup water
- 2 bell peppers, ideally 1 green and 1 red, cored and cut into 1-inch chunks
- About 1 pound (2-3) zucchini, cut into 1-inch chunks
- About 1 pound (2-4) fresh tomatoes, cored and roughly chopped
- 1-2 cloves garlic, peeled and thinly sliced or minced
- 2 teaspoons dried Italian herbs, such as basil, thyme or oregano, OR a blend
- Table salt and black pepper, starting with 1/2 teaspoon each
- 1 15-oz. can chickpeas, neither drained nor rinsed, optional
- 1 Tablespoon chopped fresh herbs such as basil or parsley, optional
- Nutritional yeast (nooch) to pass around the table as an optional topping
And Away We Go
- To parcook, pile peeled eggplant chunks on a microwave-safe dinner plate and microwave 4 minutes then stir around. Then do a second 4-minute zap and stir, followed by a third round — a total of 12 minutes — until eggplant chunks are softened and reduced greatly in size. (A fourth 4-minute round is OK if needed.) The chunks will have darkened some, too.
- While zapping the eggplant, heat a large (4-quart is big enough) saucepan on medium. Add oil OR if low-fat style add the water. Drop in chopped onion and saute a couple of minutes. Add bell pepper and zucchini and saute another couple of minutes, then stir in tomatoes, garlic and dried herbs and cover and simmer about 10 minutes, until the eggplant has completed its microwaved parcooking. Stir in the mostly cooked eggplant along with 1/2 teaspoon each of salt and ground black pepper.
- Add a can of chickpeas including liquid if a whole-meal vegan stew is desired.
- Lower heat, cover and cook 10 minutes. Or simmer, covered, up to 60 minutes, stirring and adding a little water occasionally to prevent sticking.
- Taste and adjust seasoning.
- Optionally garnish with chopped fresh green herbs and serve with nutritional yeast to pass around at the table:
- As a stew in shallow or deep bowls, with bread and perhaps a salad
- On top of long or short pasta in shallow bowls or plates
Notes
- Apologies that so many tasty veggie entries look like brown glop. It’s the chief reason I didn’t use my own photo. A better presentation can be made by using red bell pepper in the stew and topping plenty of chopped fresh herbs like basil or parsley or both.
- We usually eat as a stew the first night then over pasta later in the week. Some recommend enjoying leftover ratatouille cold or room temp.
- Instead of microwaving the eggplant chunks, steam them covered in a steamer basket over simmering water for 20 minutes. Keep the eggplant out of the water.
- When fully prepared, the eggplant is transformed into mellow pillows while most of the tomatoes simply are sauced (see photo).
- This ratatouille can be prepared instead in a 12- to 14-inch skillet with lid or an enameled Dutch oven. Because of the acid-y tomatoes, carbon steel and cast iron pans would give a metallic flavor.
- There’s little taste difference in substituting a 14.5-ounce can of diced or crushed tomatoes (undrained) for the fresh toms, due to all the other flavorful ingredients.
- My ovo-lacto vegetarian recipe version of this, Ratatouille Not Twee, was posted in 2010.
