Our Mediocre Thoughts

👨‍🍳 Trevor: Ratatouille is an interesting dish. I first saw the movie when I was young and I didn’t know much about it until I took up cooking not too long ago. I stumbled across a YouTube video of someone making it. It didn’t seem that difficult, so I went out, bought the ingredients, and made it myself. I made it again a few weeks later to see if it really was simple or if I had gotten lucky. I managed to slice my finger on my mandoline that time (seems to be a recurring theme here), and aside from the dull throbbing in the finger, the dish still tasted good.

One of the downsides to ratatouille is that it’s a very light dish — for me it’s not heavy enough to be a complete meal, and it’s too much of a pain in the ass (even the traditional way) for it to be a practical meal to make when you want something light — a salad or a simple charcuterie board would be easier. So it’s a dish I only really make when I want to either show off my cooking skills to someone, or want to use up leftover vegetables. It’s one of those recipes that I really want to love, but I just feel completely average about.

As a final note, we originally intended to make this post about going to your local farmer’s market to get ingredients for your recipes. So we bought all the produce for the Pixar version from the farmer’s market. We opted to buy all the produce for the traditional method from a regular supermarket in hopes that we would notice a difference. Spoiler alert: we did not. Should you buy produce from local farmers? Yes. Is it necessary? No.

👩‍🍳 Brittany: I was always told that eggplant was gross and smelly, so I always avoided recipes with eggplant. One day, I was feeling adventurous and bought a frozen vegetable mix that had eggplant in it. I baked it and… I was disappointed. It was soggy and gross, so I continued to avoid it. But eggplant in ratatouille? It’s delicious, and I’m glad Trevor convinced me to try it.

Would I make the Pixar-style ratatouille again? Probably not. It’s a lot of work, and although it looks pretty, I’d much rather make the traditional style (it’s fast and easy to make). I like cooking vegetarian meals at least twice a week, and I’ll definitely be adding ratatouille to the rotation! But when I’m feeling lazy (which is often) and want an even more simple recipe, I’ll make braised eggplant and tomatoes (it’s like ratatouille, without the zucchini). I made it one day because I had a leftover eggplant after making ratatouille with Trevor, and it was quite tasty!