*Ratatouille** ("Rat-a-too-ee") is a traditional French Provençal stewed vegetable dish which can be served as a meal on its own.
*Preparation time:** 1 hour and a half, minimum.
1 lb of yellow onions, chopped
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 lb zucchini, chopped
1 lb yellow squash, chopped
Bell peppers, seeds removed, chopped into 1/2 inch square pieces:
1 lb green bell peppers
1/2 lb red bell peppers
1/2 lb yellow bell peppers
1 lb eggplant, 1/2 inch cubes
1 lb fresh ripe tomatoes
1/4 cup olive oil
salt to taste
2 sprigs thyme
1 bay leaf
1 sprig rosemary
3/4 cup vegetable stock (or thin tomato juice)
fresh ground pepper to taste
Okay... let go of my neck and I’ll tell you the delicious tale of a rat who cooks. The movie is pure joy, a grand achievement - one of the most beautiful animated pictures ever made.
Remy the rodent (voiced by Patton Oswalt) dreams of becoming a gourmet chef. The whole “being a rat” thing would seem to be a hindrance to that goal, but Remy believes anything is possible.
His super-sensitive nose and refined palette have given him knowledge of food that surpasses what the average rat knows and even goes beyond what a lot of humans would know too. After being separated from his colony, Remy ends up underneath the restaurant of his favorite chef, the late Auguste Gusteau (Brad Garrett), whose famous motto was “anyone can cook.”
Thinking of Ratatouille, I am reminded of John Berendt’s “City of Falling Angels.” The author writes of meeting a gentleman whose rat poison was successful precisely because he tailored it to each country in which it was sold.
By studying what rats ate in different countries – and for what reasons – he was able to make the ingredients in his poison geography-specific. Nothing in Ratatouille is as darkly humorous or as grues me as that anecdote, but I am reminded of it nonetheless. In one story, a human cooks deadly food for foreign rats; in the other a foreign rat cooks gourmet food for humans. Each story is highly enjoyable in its own way, but I hope these two never meet.
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