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The ratatouille niçoise

Par olivier durin, dimanche 12 mars 2006 à 22:58 :: In English :: #8 :: rss

The challenge is simple: I've got to come up with french cooking while staying within the constraint of full vegetarianism to comply with my new found friends the adventists's eating habits and with the ingredients that I can find here.

Vegetables: I found aubergines, tomatoes and sweet peppers, but the "courgettes" (marrows, zucchinis? whatever) don't seem to be available. Who cares, I'll make do with what I find. There is garlic and several kinds of onions so I can improvise from there on.

I couldn't find colza oil (still looking for omega 3s) but for the deep frying, I'll use palm oil, it's not going to kill us anyway. As we have an outdoor kitchen also, I can do the frying without worrying about the smell and the heat. And it's a gas cooker, aaaah. I was so disappointed not to have gas in Paris (the former landlady had it removed because she was afraid it might explode). Now I can do some real cooking.

Even if it's simple cooking, I have to outdo myself because I have to live up to the French's reputation. If it comes out nice, I'll add a picture.

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1. Le mardi 14 mars 2006 à 04:42, par olivier durin

There was a slight problem with the outside gas cooker (a humungous leak...) so I settled for the inside cooker. There's a good vent and filter system that should have avoided the worst of the frying smell.

First thing, it's the first time I work in a large kitchen and it's a great pleasure. I had plenty of space and all the proper tools. It's much easier to keep your kitchen clean if you have enough space. You don't have to lift things up and keep them in hand while you're mopping up underneath. If you've got a small kitchen, you know what I mean.

Second, with the proper tools (in my case, the wok, a little grid fitted onto one half of it, a few plastic bags and a pair of pincers) you can achieve anything far better than with the usual improvisation of a new kitchen. I use the plastic bags to store the fried vegetables that I want to peal later. It's much easier to take the thin skin off a sweet pepper once it has sweated its oil in the plastic bag as it cooled off.

Most of all, I'm using better ingredients than I could get in France. The tomatoes might look a bit on the green side, but they're as tasty as can be, all these vegetables have smells that are telling you how good they will taste later on in your plate. There's no way I can go back to cooking the tomatoes that have grown on gellified seewead or whatever they use nowadays. Hooray for Malaysia.

2. Le lundi 27 mars 2006 à 15:19, par olivier :: site

So in the end, I didn't even get to taste it, it was eaten before I got to it apparently. But I saw some in other people's plates and they seemed to survive, so I guess it must have been OK.

Next time, I'll try something less appetising so that there some left for me.

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