Classic Cookbooks: Elizabeth David's Ratatouille
One of my guilty secrets as a food person and a word person is that I have never fallen for Elizabeth David. When Summer Cooking and A Book of Mediterranean Food were reissued by NYRB Classics in 2002, I bought them eagerly, expecting to be transported and inspired. Instead I was a little bored by the prose and much confused by the recipes, which assume a basic understanding of cookery I had not yet attained. I felt like a philistine.
But everyone else is enraptured by David, who as a young woman left her posh home to become an actress, took up with a married man with whom she traveled all over the Mediterranean, and worked abroad for the United Kingdom's Ministry of Information during World War II. After the war she introduced England to the frank foods of southern climates and became (inevitable phrase) "the foremost food writer of her day."
I can't help but find her story fascinating, and so recently I dove back into Summer Cooking, originally published in 1955 (when such Mediterranean necessities as olive oil, zucchini, and pasta were hard to come by in England; David suggested looking for olive oil at the pharmacy). Perhaps, I thought, if I start cooking from it, I'll be giving it the proper sort of attention and I'll find what I've been missing. Ratatouille seemed like a good first step.
Although many say the components of ratatouille must be cooked separately so they retain their integrity and individual tastes, this advice has always struck me as too fussy by half. I was pleased to see that David's ratatouille, which is meant to be served cold, is a one-pot affair. It's yummy, too. Maybe I'm coming around.
About the author: Robin Bellinger recently escaped a career in book publishing, which was cutting into her cooking time. Now she's a freelance editor and can bake bread on Tuesday afternoon if she feels like it. She lives in Midtown Manhattan with her husband and blogs about cooking and crafting at home*economics.
Ratatouille en Salade
- very generously serves 4 as a side dish or 8 as part of an hors d'oeuvre -
Adapted from Summer Cooking.
Ingredients
2 onions
Olive oil
2 eggplants (I used about 1 1/2 pounds eggplant)
2 large red bell peppers
4 ripe tomatoes
2 cloves garlic
A dozen coriander seeds
Parsley or basil
Procedure
1. Chop the onions fairly small and put them to stew in a sauté pan or deep frying pan in half a tumbler of olive oil (I guessed 1/2 cup and was happy with the results). Meanwhile, cut the eggplants, leaving on their skins, into 1/2-inch squares and put them, sprinkled with coarse salt, into a colander, so that some of the water drains away from them.
2. When the onions have cooked about 10 minutes and are beginning to get soft (but not fried), add the eggplants, and then the peppers, also cut into small pieces. Cover the pan and let them simmer for 30 to 40 minutes. Now add the chopped tomatoes, the garlic, and the coriander seeds. Continue cooking until the tomatoes have melted (I called them melted at 10 to 15 minutes). Should the oil dry up, add a little more, remembering that the liquid from the tomatoes will also make the ratatouille more liquid, and the final result must not be too mushy.
3. When cold, garnish it with chopped parsley or basil. Drain off any excess oil before serving.
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8 Comments:
I've never seen coriander seeds in ratatouille before - sounds delicious. I think part of David's appeal was precisely because the food she wrote about and the way she wrote about it was so entirely different from everything else in England at the time (and for many years to come). It's far from the Jamie Oliver/Nigella Lawson school, but I can sometimes see in their approach the winking of David's influence.
Luisa at 12:05PM on 08/18/08
I need to use exactly 12 coriander seeds?
KarynMC at 12:08PM on 08/18/08
I learned to make ratatouille from Elizabeth David's book. As I remember the recipe was originally published in her French Provincial cookbook - my copy was from a second-hand store, tattered and worn even when I first had it a long time ago.
The coriander seeds are excellent in the recipe - they show an influence of Moorish cooking which sometimes appears in the foods of Provence. The best thing to do is to either wrap them in cheesecloth during the cooking process or to smash them in a mortar to a somewhat smooth consistency before adding. Otherwise their texture can be surprisingly unpleasant when biting into one in the otherwise smooth softness of the vegetable stew.
The original recipe calls for "a few coriander seeds". How many you use depends on how much you like the flavor and how fresh the seeds are . . .
In a time when cooking with fat did not fill minds with terror - except perhaps due to the price of it, for Elizabeth David was writing post-war (WWII) when rationing had so recently been a part of daily life and when things like olive oil or any sort of fat for cooking was still difficult to find and expensive - surprisingly, her original recipe calls for "2 coffee-cups (after-dinner size) of olive oil" (!)
I enjoy the way she wrote recipes, as a narrative rather than as a mathematic/outline structure. It always made the preparation of food seem more organic (organic as in "a part of things" not organic as in "green") - more natural, more seeming-as-if I was learning at someones apron. That the recipe could come out different as each person made it is a good thing - for no recipe is sacrosanct unless we make it so (and to my mind to make a recipe sacrosanct is silly unless one has a predeliction towards worship of it).
I also always thought her relationship with Norman Douglas was innocent of horseplay (so to speak), though it was long-lasting and obviously of depth. (?) I hope so. Learning these things about adored writers can cast certain shades of discomfort upon the whole thing. Women more than men, too (though certainly not "fair", true).
foodvox at 1:00PM on 08/18/08
Interesting. I enjoyed the Elizabeth David biography Writing at the Kitchen Table way more than I enjoy actually reading Elizabeth David. I've been trying to get through English Bread and Yeast Cookery for about three consecutive vacations now, and it's not for lack of sufficient nerdiness about dough. But all this makes me want to try one more time.
climalene at 1:42PM on 08/18/08
I made Julia Child's recipe twice over the last few weeks and while it is wonderful, it's as you say, fussy. Extremely time consuming, cooking the eggplant separately, then the zucchini, then the onions and tomatoes, etc. etc.
foodiedani at 9:57AM on 08/19/08
@climalene - I could not swallow her English Bread and Yeast Cookery book as anything but something to dip into for reference once in a while.
It seems to me that her prose and style got heavier through the lifetime of her writing - that some of the lightness that did show (even though all of her prose is thicker than most writing styles today) in the earlier works was gone, with a bit more self-conscious studiousness coming in to replace it.
Fantastic for academic research purposes but not something one wants to pick up and play with too much perhaps. :)
foodvox at 12:23PM on 08/19/08
I was taught in cooking school that the French like their ratatouille fully cooked, bien cuit. So I don't understand the preference for cooking everything separately a la Julia. I don't go by amounts except by personal bias in having summer tomatoes, eggplants and zucchini. I just start some onions and garlic, add peppers and the rest and stew for at least 1/2 hour, concentrating the juices.
Sorry but I'm having a little mental trouble imagining caraway seeds in there. I serve mine warm the first time, then refrigerate overnight and try to serve at room temperature in following days. It is one of my favorite dishes and my husband will eat it if he can take out the eggplant.
tdl1501 at 4:33AM on 09/06/08
When reading the original I thought two after dinner coffee cups would mean two demitasse cups which would not be much more than 1/2 cup.
NO_Pam at 11:37AM on 12/03/08