Belated Food Friday: Ratatouille, Julia and a poem

I will be making a roast leg of lamb tomorrow for my non-Jewish spouse and mother-in-law. Plus, I've loved lamb since I was a spoiled child who refused any meat except baby lamb chops (!) from my over-indulgent mom.

As a remembrance of happy days in England, I will serve the lamb with roasted potatoes, mint jelly and minted sweet garden peas.

But what else to accompany succulent, fragrant lamb? Perhaps it will be a flavor mismatch with all that mint, but there's nothing like eggplant to stand up to the strong flavor of lamb. The pairing is the soul of Greek moussaka. So the meal will take a side trip to the Mediterranean and I'll make a pot of ratatouille.

The name "ratatouille" comes from the French "touiller", meaning "to stir." The dish is French Provençal in origin and traditionally contains eggplant, zucchini, onions, bell peppers, garlic and tomatoes. It's hearty enough to stand on its own, accompanied by a good baguette for dipping into the savory juices, and bold enough to be an excellent foil to roasted meats.

For years I've followed Julia Child's stern and exacting instructions from "Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. 1." Julia insists that each ingredient be sliced just so, in order for "each vegetable to retain its own shape and character." Then the eggplant and zucchini are salted and drained of their bitter juices. Each component must be sautéed separately before they are brought together in one pot to marry their flavors in a warm bath of olive oil and freshly chopped parsley.

Since I always doubled the quantity of the recipe (why go to all that trouble for only one meal?), the whole thing took at least two hours of chopping, sautéeing and simmering. Any time I tried a shortcut--say, skipping the sautéeing and going straight to the simmering--the results were disappointing. Julia knew her stuff, alright, but the recipe was so labor intensive that I only made it once or twice a year.

Last week, however, I had a ratatouille breakthrough. With one soon-to-go-bad eggplant on hand, I thought I'd sauté it with an onion and some canned diced tomatoes. Then I found some zucchini that really had to be used as well, and one red bell pepper. Voilá, as they say. I skipped the salting step and cut everything into 1/2-inch dice to cook quickly. The red pepper was sweeter than the usual green pepper, so any residual eggplant bitterness was minimal. In less than an hour, I had the best pot of ratatouille I'd ever made. Only four servings worth, but fast and easy enough to undertake far more often.

If you'd like to try making ratatouille, it's quite simple. Dice roughly equal amounts of peeled eggplant, zucchini, onions and red bell pepper. Don't fret too much about proportions; this is a country vegetable stew and you can add or subtract as you like. Mince some garlic and parsley. Sauté the eggplant in olive oil with a little salt, and reserve. Do the same for the zucchini, and then the peppers, onions and garlic all together. Add some canned diced tomatoes, drained, to the pepper/onion mixture and sauté for a little while longer to heat the tomatoes. Finally layer each ingredient into a large pot, with the chopped parsley. Add salt and pepper to taste. Stir gently and simmer for another ten minutes or so. Ratatouille can be served hot or cold and is even better reheated the next day.

I miss Julia Child's warbling voice and warm assurances that any of us can produce great meals in our dinky kitchens. The Food Network star chefs are good, but they are also pretty slick. Julia was one-of-a-kind, a true enthusiast, a genuine original.

Here's a poem to Julia written by her husband, Paul Child. He was a diplomat (sometimes rumored to have also been a spy), painter and woodcarver, and some of his poems to Julia were published by The New York Times Magazine on May 16, 1976. I've saved that yellowing page in my copy of "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" ever since.

The disgraced orifice

O mouth so sweet, so made for honeyed words,
So made for other lips to press, for love,
How can such sounds, such squawks absurd,
Such moans,
such twittering coos of turtledove,
Disgrace that lovely, sensuous orifice?
What nightmare inspiration guides that voice
Whose famed mellifluous flow (antagonist
To all that's sordid) makes our world rejoice?
Could lowly eating be the means?
Could herbs?
Could it be wine and sauce and meat and fish
Which cause the groaning sound
that so disturbs
Her loving friends? Alas, we can but wish
   'Twere not--but 'tis! Yet, how can one forego
   One's pleasure in her friendship, even so?