Your favorite YouTube chef Andrew Rea (AKA Binging With Babish) is back with a new how-to video. Last week, the internet phenomenon participated in a Reddit AMA. He asked fans to vote on his next video and they picked the ratatouille from the 2007 Pixar, animated movie of the same name. If you didn’t already know, the name is an obvious play on words because the main character of the film is a rat named Remy (voiced by Patton Oswalt) as well as the food that human chef Linguini (voiced by Lou Romano) makes for restaurant critic Anton Ego (voiced by Peter O’Toole) in the climactic scene. This is pretty much the plot of the movie. But, if you haven’t seen it and you enjoy Patton Oswalt, it’s definitely worth a watch.
For those who don’t know what Ratatouille is or didn’t see the movie, it’s a stewed vegetable dish that originated in France (Nice to be exact). It consists of sautéed tomatoes, onions, garlic, eggplant, fennel, bell peppers and various other herbs and spices. Technically, chef Linguini doesn’t even really make ratatouille to impress food critic though. He really makes a similar dish called confit byaldi. Rea refers to this as, “a modern spin on ratatouille”. It looks the same to us, but we aren’t competing on Top Chef any time soon.
To make his version, Rea blanches tomatoes and then peels them. After this, he roasts yellow, orange, red peppers on his stove top. He jokes that people planning to imitate his recipe don’t need to use three different colored peppers. You can just roast red peppers because, “who cares”. Just make sure to blacken all sides of whatever color peppers you choose to use for your recipe.
Also, don’t be like Rea. Use metal tongs instead of plastic. Plastic and fire don’t really mix too well. That is, unless you want to scrap melted plastic off of your burners for the rest of the day. Also, melted plastic probably won’t add a positive flavor to your dish. After covering them in foil so they can steam, peel off the skin. Combine those with your tomatoes and a whole mess of other ingredients in a blender. Once this is all blended together, it will create a “roasted red pepper soup”.
The next part of the process if very time consuming. Thinly slice tomatoes, zucchini, squash, and eggplant. Then chop up some rosemary before pouring your previously made puree into a pan. If you thought that part was time-consuming, now you need to “shingle” the sliced veggies to make it look presentable. Drizzle olive oil, salt, and pepper over the beautiful dish before putting parchment paper on top. Put it into a 225 degree oven for 90 minutes. This will slow roast and steam the veggies and bring everything magically together. If you really want to make it the way it is in the movie, you have to plate the whole thing in a ring mold.
