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apairofcrepeswiththerarestape · 6 years

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Y'all spring is here! The sun is out! Flowers are blooming! I feel a sense of shame as I look at other people's instagrams of being in like parks or whatever while I sit at home writing/watching parts of I, Tonya on Hulu/telling myself that I need to be out of the house by 1 but actually leaving the house at 2:30! It also means that there are many vegetables out and around and insides of stores and also in those shame inducing instagrams. Between that and the friends from last week that were sick and could not come over and experience the delicious cauliflower but this week were not sick but were still vegetarian, I needed something from Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child that was springy. Unforch there are no regular salads in the book as far as I can tell but there is a dish that is pretty much hot salad! Ratatouille aka Eggplant Casserole - with Tomatoes, Onions, Peppers, and Zucchini! Ratatouille has no direct translation but is related to the french word for "to stir up". I personally would have preferred that as the english version of the recipe so I'm going to say I made Eggplant, Tomatoes, Onions, Peppers, and Zucchini All Stirred Up. No I have not seen the movie but I have been on the ride based on the movie at Walt Disney Studios Paris and it was great (no I did not ride the Rock 'N' Roller Coaster starring Aerosmith, yes that is a real thing)!

What you have to buy for hot salad is vegetables, because other that salt and olive oil and fire and cooking tools that is all this dish is. I went to the fancy grocery store because instead of having no choice in eggplants, as was the case at the grocery store down my block, I wanted to be paralyzed by my choices of eggplant and briefly I was! There were like 4 kinds of eggplant at the fancy grocery store and I stood there dumbfounded for at the selection like I was in the third act of an indie dramedy about sad upper middle class white people living in Los Angeles (for a second I thought a Duplass brother was going to walk up, tap me on the shoulder, and tell me to channel the feeling of my favorite succulent dying). I really wanted to get the very cool looking stripey eggplant but I totally chickened out because I'm a rule following nerd. I ended up getting a regular ass eggplant that weighed exactly 1 pound which is exactly what the book told me to do. I also got 1 pound of zucchini even though as I child I despised zucchini, really all squashes were super gross to me. I think it stemmed from a meal where I was served "spaghetti squash" and my mind shut off after I heard the word spaghetti, so I was sorely disappointed and blamed it on all squashkind. Along with the zukes (me and zucchini are cool now, so I can call it that) I got a head of garlic, a yellow onion, two green peppers, a pound of tomatoes, and just however much parsley they give you in a bunch (could I just peel off a few sprigs from that bunch? Am I just contemplating this now? See, I AM a rule following nerd) and THAT WAS IT! I stuffed it all in my backpack without plastic bags even though I'm sure the fancy grocery store has biodegradable ones and prayed that my belongings wouldn't be covered in crushed tomatoes on my train ride.

All these vegetables needed to be prepped to hell before the actual cooking took place, so prep them I did! I peel the eggplant and cut it into slices 3/8 inch thick, 3 inches long, and 1 inch wide, I did the same to the no longer gross to me zucchini. I mean, actually I did my best to keep these measurements but after a while I just got tired so they were all roughly the same size. I tossed my vegetable shapes into a bowl with a teaspoon of salt and let that sit for a half hour. While those salted themselves I went to work on the other parts of this hot salad. I peeled and juiced my tomatoes, still creepily enjoyable, also was it weird that this time I did it while Goodbye Horses played in the background (hey it's an excellent song!)? I also sliced the onions and and green pepper and then mashed a couple of garlic cloves and then all of my hot salad elements we almost ready to become hot. Before the hottening could begin though I had to drain and dry my eggplant and zukes and this was a huge pain in the ass! 1 pound of eggplant and 1 pound of zucchini makes for many 3/8 by 3 by 1 inch slices, all of these had to be dried by hand. One of the few things that I knew about food before I started this was wet eggplant before cooking made for slimy eggplant after cooking so I knew I had to be diligent in this very boring pain in the ass activity. After what seemed like the lifetime I was done drying all the pieces and it was finally time to make these cold veggie chunks considerably warmer.

Could I just throw all this stuff in a pot and let it cook? NO! Of course all these vegetable pieces had to be cooked on their own and then cooked again because Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child is all about letting you know that french people had and have a lot of time on their hands. Luckily, I could do all the cooking in just two cooking vessels rather than the parade of pots and pans necessary for a lot of these recipes (MY DISHPAN HANDS!). First I had to saute all my tiny and very very dry pieces of eggplant and zucchini, in 4 tablespoons of olive oil for just a minute on each side which was fun (just kidding, it was very tedious! Also it was impossible to cook each on both sides for just a minute unless I had some sort of stopwatch for each individual piece or cooked them one at a time, both of those choice would be insane!)! I set those aside so I could replace them with the sliced onion and green pepper which I sautéed for about 10 minutes, during which I probably read about Westworld theories (I think the one human guy might be a robot guy!), then I stirred in the two mashed cloves of garlic and some salt and pepper to my taste which is NONE OF YOUR DAMN BUSINESS. I sliced the pulped and juiced tomatoes into 3/8 inch strips then laid them on top of of the other stuff in the pan, I salted and peppered again and tried to find something to cover it all with. In a pinch I went with plate even though seconds later I realized we had a cover for that pan because I am very good at planning things. I sat in my regrets for 5 minutes then took the plate off of all that cooking vegetation. I then basted all that mess with the juices it had rendered which was fun and also a little gross now that I write it out. After I basted I turned up the heat and boiled that biz, which will be the name of my business seminar for small Irish restaurants and dermatological practices, until almost all that liquid was gone. THEN IT WAS FINALLY TIME TO PUT ALL THIS STUFF IN A DANG POT.

Like I was creating one of those coke bottles creatures filled with sand at the state fair (You know the ones you'd put googly eyes on and like a golf tee for a nose and maybe a treasure troll like shock of hair at the top? Is this a reference that you understand? One of the deep subgoals of this project is testing the unanimity of state fair experience) I had to layer all these cooked vegetables in the pot. First went one third of the tomato/onion/garlic/pepper mixture, then 1 tablespoon of minced parsley, then half of the eggplant and zucchinis, then another third of the tomato mix, then another tablespoon of parsley, then the rest of the eggplant and zucchinis, then the rest of the tomato mix and then finally one more tablespoon of parsley. I covered my stratified vegetal mix and simmered for 10 minutes, then I took the top off (of the pot you pervs), leaned the pot on its side and basted that mess with its rendered juices (no way to stop you pervs from going wild with that one). I turned up the heat and cooked everything for another 15 minutes, basting every now and then as the mood struck me (and it struck me OFTEN (actually Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child instructed me to baste several times so I did it, it was not in any way whimsical)), till pretty much all the juices were cooked off besides a couple of spoonfuls. Then, at last, my ratatouille was done.

AND MY RATATOUILLE WAS GOOD! I felt bad though at the end because I realized that this whole thing didn't have any butter so it was probably the only vegan dish in this whole book and I didn't even invite over the one vegan who we're good enough of friends with to invite into our apartment! Sorry unnamed vegan friend! You missed out (well not really since you had no idea it was happening) on some delicious hot salad! Anyway, this was very tasty and not slimy and goopy like I thought it might be. It was, however, a lot of work! Maybe too much for hot salad! If you are a vegan though and need to make something French for your Bastille Day party (it's coming up!) this would be great for you to make! I will probably not be making this any time soon though! So I would say to you, non-vegans, this one doesn't quite have to ROI that you might be looking for in cooking! But do make RATATOUILLE aka EGGPLANT CASSEROLE- WITH TOMATOES, ONIONS, PEPPERS, AND ZUCCHINI aka EGGPLANT WITH TOMATOES ONIONS, PEPPERS AND ZUCCHINI ALL MIXED UP aka HOT SALAD for your vegan pals! They will probably like it! SEE YOU NEXT WEEK!

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#tdandjulia ratatouille EggplantCasserolewithTomatoesOnionsPeppersZucchini allstirredup hotsalad disneylandparis aerosmithrollercoaster mesme

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