I’ve been reading Julia Child’s My Life in France and the difficulties she faced trying to publish Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  In 1959, when Houghton Mifflin finally passed on the book, and before Knopf picked it up, Julia read a note from her champion at Houghton who explained the rejection, “They feel [the average housewife] wants ’shortcuts to something equivalent’ instead of the perfect process to the absolute.”

America’s culture has changed a lot since then, but anyone who reads Simone de Beauvoir’s 1947 America Day by Day will be struck by how much has remained consistent.  The business instincts of the Houghton execs remains somewhat true today if Rachel Ray’s empire is any evidence.  Thankfully, there is room for more ambitious efforts, as Julia Child and Simone Beck proved and as new author/chefs continue to show; a recent example is Paul Bertolli’s almost literary Cooking by Hand.

Ratatouille strikes me as a perfect dish to highlight the merits of the two mindsets (and there are indeed merits to both).  Sometimes I will throw together a ratatouille very quickly, let all the components stew together for a while unaided, and enjoy a perfectly good rendition.  However, with a little more effort and time, you can take the dish to a different level entirely.

On Friday evening, after picking up some lovely fresh vegetables from the local farm, I rolled up my sleeves and put together an adaptation of Lulu Peyraud’s ratatouille from Richard Olney’s cookbook Lulu’s Provencal Table. It is considerably more involved than my usual, but the result, which we ate the next evening, was the sweetest, most delicious ratatouille I have had in a long while.

Ratatouille, adapted from Richard Olney and Lulu Peyraud’s recipe

1 lb vidalia onion, halved then thinly sliced
6 garlic cloves, lightly crushed, peeled and minced
1 lb zucchini, preferably small to medium sized, quartered and cut into 3/4 inch pieces
1 lb young eggplant, preferably Asian/Japanese (unless you are French), halved if large, and cut into 3/4 inch rounds
1 lb plum tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and cut into eighths
3 large sweet peppers (a mix of colors is nice; I used 2 red, 1 green), treatment below
Bouquet garni of 2 small sprigs each of oregano and winter savory, and 2 bay leaves, tied with kitchen string
salt
olive oil

In a large pot, warm up 3 tbsp of olive oil on very low heat and slowly cook the onions for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add 1 tsp of salt (I like cooking with kosher salt), the minced garlic, and the sliced zucchini. Continue to cook on the low heat, stirring occasionally.

While your onions cook, peel and de-seed the tomatoes. To peel the tomatoes, score an X in the skin on the bottom of the tomato, and place in boiling water for 30 seconds.  Let cool, and the skin should slip off quite easily.  Slice in half (if the tomato was the earth, and the stem is the north pole, cut at the equator) and use a finger to remove most of the seeds.  Chop each tomato into 8 chunks and reserve.

Char your sweet peppers under the boiler, on the grill, or directly on a gas flame (Lulu’s method is to char over wood embers, but not everyone has that luxury).  Place the peppers in a paper bag and let cool for several minutes.  Peel of the charred skins, and de-seed, being careful to preserve the juices from the inside of the peppers.  Reserve those juices (sans seeds), and slice the peppers lengthwise into narrow strips; reserve.

In a large, heavy-bottomed skillet, heat up 2 tbsp of olive oil on medium heat. Saute the eggplant rounds (or pieces) on one side for a couple of minutes, sprinkling half a teaspoon of salt on top, then add another 1 or 2 tbsp of olive oil and flip the eggplant and cook the other side for several minutes until they are softened.  I add the oil in two steps so that one side of the eggplant doesn’t absorb it all. Add the eggplant to the stew pot with the onions, leaving remaining oil in the skillet.

If the skillet is fairly dry, add another tbsp of olive oil, get the pan fairly hot with high heat, and then add the tomatoes and half a teaspoon of salt. Saute, shaking the pan and stirring the tomatoes until much of the liquid has evaporated, but before the tomatoes disintegrate.  Empty the skillet into the stew pot.

Add the peppers and the reserved juices, and immerse the bouquet garnis.

Cook at a low simmer, uncovered, for 2 hours stirring occasionally and lowering the heat as the liquid reduces. Cook until all the excess liquid has evaporated and the vegetables are covered in a syrupy sauce.

Remove from the heat, taste for salt and stir in a little pepper. Let cool, and then refridgerate overnight.  Let the ratatouille come to room temperature the next day before serving.

Additional Lulu ideas: stir in some pitted black olives, some diced celery, and/or some more olive oil right before serving.

Spring is finally starting to emerge, and my palette is very Mediterranean-focused. Last weekend, this manifested in the form of a galette — essentially an onion tart with the addition of zucchini, olives, garlic, and tomatoes.  Instead of a pâte brisée, I decided to try a Provençal pastry (pâte à l’huile d’olive) which Richard Olney describes in Simple French Food (my new flame). It is easy to make, quite tasty, and has a rustic personality and texture.

As you can see from the picture, I almost completely covered over the top of the galette with folds rather than trimming the rolled pastry closer to the edge.  I think next time I would either trim the pastry more aggressively or make a full pie/pouch (see below) to avoid the problem of over-thick pastry at the folds. However, there is a primary advantage to this big-fold approach: it is really easy to eat with your hands!

Provençal Pastry
from Richard Olney’s Simple French Food
2 cups flour
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup tepid water
1 egg
1/4 tsp salt
(plus extra flour for working surface)

Filling
1 large vidalia onion, sliced thin
1 medium/large zucchini, grated
1 large garlic clove, minced
5 greek olives, pitted and chopped
2 tsp fresh oregano, chopped
1/2 tsp fresh parsley, chopped
1 roma (plum) tomato, sliced
1 1/2 tbsp unsalted butter
salt and pepper
olive oil
parchment paper

Making the Pastry
Place the flour, salt, egg, olive oil and water in a mixing bowl. Mix it together with a fork, and then knead it together with your knuckles until mixed through.  Form into a ball, cover the bowl with a towel, and let rest for at least an hour.

Making the Filling
On low heat, melt the butter and a splash of olive oil in a large saute pan. Saute the sliced onions, stirring occasionally, for 20 minutes, letting them turn a nice golden color. Add in the zucchini, olives, garlic and herbs and saute for another 15 to 20 minutes. (Note: A great method for pitting greek olives is to crush them with the side of a chef’s knife; the pit becomes quite easy to pop out.) If the mixture gets too dry as you saute, you can add a little white wine or dry vermouth, but do not let the filling get too liquid. Taste for salt and pepper, then let cool.

As the filling cools, preheat the oven to 375F.

Finishing the Galette
On a well-floured surface, roll out your pastry. Trim the pastry so that it is about 12 inches in diameter. Cover a large baking tray with parchment paper, and then move the pastry onto the parchment paper by: gently fold it in half, fold in quarter, move to parchment paper, then unfold.

Spoon your now cool filling to the middle of the pastry, dot the top with slices of tomato, and fold the extra pastry up and over at a slight angle.* Brush or smear (with your fingers) the surface of the pastry with olive oil. Bake for 50 minutes until the pastry is golden brown.

*Note: if you want to make a pie/pouch, you’ll need to divide the pastry in half and roll out two pieces. Place the filling on the bottom piece, and then cover with the second. Press the edges of pastry together with your fingers, and then roll the edge up and inward, creating a thicker ribbon of pastry around the edge. Press down around the ribbon with the tines of a fork. Smear the top of the pastry with olive oil before baking.

A segue: I’m very picky about the freshness of my fish, and until I find a fishmonger I trust, I tend to stay away. When I lived in San Francisco a decade ago, I would trek out to the Chinese markets in Sunset because the freshness was so superior to the normal supermarkets. We’ve now been in Rye, NY for two years, but I will admit that it took Peter’s post to get me to test out a fish market in Port Chester. The upside is that I was very impressed. One look at the eyes of the whole snappers behind the glass and I knew that they dealt in fresh fish.

Back to this recipe, the amounts here feed two quite nicely. It’s a delicious, fast meal to put together, and the ingredients are quite similar to how I like to cook mussels. The below is similar to Peter’s recipe, but not identical, so I recommend you check out his blog as well if you haven’t already.

Baked Halibut

A 1 lb halibut steak (or filets)
1 small red onion, thinly sliced into rings or half-rings
2 cloves garlic, minced
half a green pepper, chopped
3 campari tomatoes (or a handful of cherry tomatoes)
1/4 cup dry vermouth
pinch of dry basil
several leaves of fresh oregano
lemon
salt and pepper

Pre-heat oven to 400F.

Heat up a splash of olive oil on medium-low heat and saute the onions and garlic for a couple of minutes. Then add in the green pepper, saute for a few minutes. Then add in the vermouth and a couple pinches of salt and pepper. Cook for a few more minutes then remove from the heat.

Lay the halibut on a piece of parchment paper that extends several inches past the length-wise ends of the steak. Sprinkle a little salt and pepper on top, then spoon out the vegetables and liquid on top of the fish. Sprinkle a pinch of dried basil leaves on top, dot a few oregano leaves around, and place two slices of lemon on each end of the steak. Fold the sides of the parchment paper up towards the middle and tuck one over the other and refold a few times to create a seal and get the paper snug with the fish. Twist each end of paper and tie off with kitchen string.

Place on a baking tray. If you have too much parchment paper hanging off the ends to fit in the oven easily, trim with scissor. Bake for 25 minutes. If you have a steak, remove the backbone from the middle, carefully half the fish, and plate. Spoon the delicious broth over the top.

Note: bottom image above is after baking

I kept the below picture of the halibut steak because it interested me. I can’t quite put my finger on why; perhaps because it has that grainy, soft-focus, de-saturated look I adore in Orangette’s pictures.

P.S. Now that I’m cooking fish again, I have to tackle an interesting but never-attempted technique: baking a whole fish packed in salt.