I'm not talking about that cute little mouse

A year or so ago, the fact that animation lives and is well was brought home by a wonderful movie for kids, that I loved as well. That movie, "Ratatouille" was about a mouse who dreams of being a cook. It's an interesting concept, at least to me, feeding into the question of how do animals taste things? Is it different from people? I know, from studying biology, that the "taste" for things sweet, and aversion to bitter things, is found in as "primitive" an organism as a bacterium. The interesting question for me, however, and one that cannot be answered, is: do bacteria "taste" sweet things the same way I do? Are there bacteria that prefer sugar from apples as compared to peaches, or plums, and so forth?

I know, I know: "what in the blue blazes is he going on about today?" Another mindless rumination.

To the topic at hand: ratatouille. I guess this, too, is a canonical dish. You don't see it in restaurants as often as you used to. It was EVERYWHERE in the 80s. You got it on a dinner plate, you could get a ratatouille omelet, I remember seeing ratatouille quiche (oh, does that sound VILE), I remember seeing fish served on a bed of ratatouille, and so on , and so on, and so on. As it became more popular, it became much harder to find a version that was really GOOD. That happens a lot. It happened with quiche, it happened with pizza (although that's changing), and it happened with ice cream (and no, it is NOT changing. The fact that ice cream is "premium" does NOT necessarily improve it).

At its roots, ratatouille is a very basic dish to conceptualize. It's a "stew" of sorts, involving three basic ingredients: tomatoes, squash, and eggplant. I would posit, however, that the most important ingredient in ratatouille is the olive oil. This is what is going to carry the flavor, for vegetables which, at their heart, are pretty bland (squash and eggplant. Taste an uncooked piece of either one and you'll see what I mean). Salt is important in this dish too. So we have a basic set of five ingredients. And you can make excellent ratatouille with just those five. You can kick it up by starting with a base of onions , with garlic. For me, basil is essential (something I learned from reading about Lulu Peyaud). If you don't care for basil, then I would suggest you use thyme, because a fresh herb is really a fine addition to this. And if you want to make it a main dish, I would suggest that you do what MFK Fisher taught us to do: she used to put small shelled shrimp on top of warm ratatouille, and serve them together. I think scallops would do nicely as well. My friend David, who has a gift for combining seemingly disparate food ideas into recipes that sound good, will probably come up with something else when I tell him about this.

Now, to the issue of getting GOOD ratatouille. I had always wondered why mine was always so , well, boring and yucky. And then, I remembered a technique I had learned from Carlo Middione's book, for making that wonderful southern Italian "relish," caponata. Caponata uses three basic ingredients: onions, celery and eggplant, and Chef Carlo's suggestion was that each item should be cooked separately, and then everything combined at the last minute, and given a short time to liase, in order to keep the component flavors clear, and to get a final dish that wasn't "smudgy." It works with caponata, which I still have to make this year. And it works with ratatouille.

The other thing to remember with ratatouille is that there is a temptation to make GALLONS of it. Don't. First of all, a little ratatouille goes a long way. Second, the more of it you make, the harder it is to maintain "quality control" . The quantities I give below are more than enough to feed a fair number of people a nice portion. If you REALLY want to make huge quantities, make the recipe twice, but don't double it.

The key ingredient, in terms of quantity, is going to be the eggplant. DON'T go with big ones. If you have a choice between a two pound eggplant, and two one pounders, go with the latter. I learned that from Nana. Everytime she read an article that talked about using "eggplant heavy for its size," she said something vulgar in Italian that basically meant "it just means someone cut it open and pissed in it." Bigger eggplant have way more water in them than smaller ones do. And they are more bitter. And, here's a little bit of trivia for you about eggplants. It is NOT true that there are "male" and "female" eggplants, but there IS a difference in the eggplants . Look at the base of them, sometime. You will see some with a scar sort of mark, and some with a small round indentation. For whatever reason, people call the scar type "female," and the round ones "male." Fact is, the scar ones will have more seeds in them than the round ones will, and seed will make your eggplant bitter. So if you can, go with the round ones.

Using the smaller ones also allows you to do something that you really can't do when they are bigger: it allows you to use the peel. That is, when you cut the eggplant into cubes, which is what you will do, you don't have to peel it if you use small ones. The peel adds a level of complexity and color to the dish that you want.

Ok, so you've cut the eggplant into cubes. Now you need squash. Zucchini is traditional, but I think that's because that's what was around. If you can get a varieity of squashes, use them. Cube them in a size about the same as the eggplants, and use about 2/3 of the amount of eggplant.

Finally, to the tomatoes. For this dish, I would use regular tomatoes, but I prefer plum tomatoes if they are available. Plum tomatoes have more flesh and less juice than regular tomatoes, and you want that thickness here. Core them, and cut them into cubes. You will want about the same volume of tomatoes as you do of squash.

Now, time to get started. If you want to use an onion, chop up a nice sized one. In one pan, cover the bottom with olive oil - and be generous here - and add the chopped onion when the oil is hot, together with a generous pinch of salt. When this has gone translucent, add your tomatoes, and lower the heat. Keep an eye on them. You want them to get soft, but you don't really want sauce.

On the burner next to that pan, use a big POT, and again, cover it with oil. When it's hot, add the squash (the order here is important, as I shall explain). Again, add some salt and saute the squash until it softens, but don't cook it until it turns brown. When it's done, scoop it out with a slotted spoon. You will have some oil left. If you started with the eggplant, you would not. Eggplant is sometimes called "vegetable sponge" because of the way it soaks up oil. Replenish the oil in the pan, and add the eggplant and some salt, again. Eggplant tends to stick , and that's okay, because of what you're going to be doing in a step or two. Keep turning the eggplant until it begins to soften. If your tomatoes have softened, turn off that pan. The eggplant will take the longest to soften of all of the vegetables, and you'll see a distinct "collapse" in the cell structure of the vegetable. When that happens, add the squash back to the pot, and then pour in the tomatoes. Cover the pot, and lower the heat, and let it cook away for about fifteen minutes, at low heat. Check it every now and then for texture . You don't want things to fall apart completely, but you don't want these vegetables to be "toothsome."

When you've got it to a texture you like, get a big handful of basil leaves and tear them (don't cut them. For some reason, metal makes basil leaves brown. Tearing doesn't). Turn off the heat and stir the basil leaves in (incidentally, Madame Peyaud's recipe calls for the leaves of three basil plants. She is from Provence, which may explain it. I love basil, but not that much).

And there you have it. You will have people who say this is better if you let it sit for a day. To my taste, it's different. Not necessarily better. I do like it right out of the pot, and interestingly enough, I like it on rice. If it's cold, I like putting it on french bread, and maybe tossing a few (alright, a LOT ) of black olives on top of it, and maybe some white cheese of some kind. But those are options. You can use MFK Fisher's version, of course, or you can eat it just plain.

This is summer food, and it's summer. Now's your chance. If eggplant parmagiana sounds too scary, do this one.