Ratatouille Or Something - Episode 14 (Part 2)

TALIESIN: Oh, that was so much fun.
SAM: Who was that stranger?
TALIESIN: Oh, Ratatouille or something, I didn't really catch it.
SAM: Are you up to going back into the party, or do you--
TALIESIN: No.
SAM: Just to, okay.
TALIESIN: I think going back would be a very bad idea at this point, but I feel like we learned something. Sadly, this fucked up my new clothes, but that's okay.
SAM: Do you feel badly about how this went? Do you need revenge?
TALIESIN: No.
MATT: It's right about this time that three of the members of the Paragon's Call crew, the minotaur, the half-orc, and the human have stepped beyond the crowd to approach you. 

SAM: Oh no

MATT: The minotaur, "The general would like to sit with you at the table and converse."
TALIESIN: I'm a little uh... uh punched at the moment.
MATT: Reaches into the side of his little vest that he put over the heavy hides and the meager attempt at looking presentable and pulls out a thick piece of cloth, like a napkin of some kind that may have been stolen from the inside. And just reaches over and wipes the blood off your face aggressively, like a mom who's done with their child. He's like, "Now you're presentable. Come inside," and grabs your shoulder.
TALIESIN: Will there be booze? Oh.
MATT: And they don't even pay attention to you, just begin to muscle Ashton back--
TALIESIN: I'll be back!
MATT: -- as you watch.
SAM: I'm going to try to tag along, just to make sure that they don't take him and throw him in the back of a station wagon or something.

Campaign 3 Episode 14, "In Too Deep," February 17, 2022
Thanks to critrole.fandom.com for the transcript from the episode shown above.

Ratatouille Or Something

I didn't really catch the name...

Welcome to Part 2 of my recipes for the evening! If you want to see part 1 (in honor of Robbie/Dorian's departure), you can go see the recipe for the tribute drink here: Levitate. 

Ratatouille is one of those things that is probably hard to make, right? It's French cooking, it's difficult to spell but fun to say... so it's gotta be complicated to cook. Actually, not really. Ratatouille, as it turns out, is a pretty humble dish (unlike the NPC that Ashton fought), not something complicated or expensive. In fact, if you've ever had Zoodles or zucchini noodles, you're halfway there. Ratatouille is really all of the squash types (and their cousins) that have Ashton's color template cut thin and stacked in a casserole dish with a homemade spaghetti sauce. Then you bake it. 

I sort of love that this dish has Ashton's color palette (more specifically my version does) and, after the beating they took, the red sauce could be blood! How fun! Anyway, since Ashton didn't care to remember the guy's name, I figured I'd honor them with his nickname. This is a great dish to impress, but, we can keep it a secret that it's not really that difficult to make! Here we go.

Ingredients

• Sauce
• Olive Oil
• 1 onion
• 4 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 Tablespoon Herbes de Provence
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 Tablespoon dried thyme
• 1 can of crushed tomatoes (about 14 oz, whatever can size is close to that)
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 2 Tablespoons of Balsamic Vinegar (though I'd recommend only doing 1)
• 8-10 Basil leaves, chopped (about 2 Tablespoons)
• 1/2 cup of heavy cream or half-and-half
• Vegetables
• 1 Eggplant (purple)
• 2 Yellow zucchinis (or squash)
• 2 Green Zucchinis (darker green in color)
• 2 green squash (light green in color)

Olive Oil and Sugar are not pictured.

When you cut the vegetables, you want to get them as thin as you can manage. The recipes suggest around 1/8 of an inch, but I know mine were not consistent, so "as thin as you can," is a very good goal. If you have a Mandoline that should help with keeping the slices a consistent thickness. But my vegetables were also very different girths, but we worked with it! Don't let non-uniformity keep you from trying this recipe. 

Directions

1. Prepare the Sauce
1. Heat a drizzle of Olive Oil to a frying pan over medium heat. 
2. Add the onions and cook until tender, but don't brown them - about 4-5 minutes
3. After the onions cook about 2 minutes add the garlic for the remaining cook time of the onion. 
4. Add crushed tomatoes, paprika, black pepper, Herbes de Provence, thyme and salt, mix well. Add sugar and balsamic vinegar. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer for 5 minutes. 
5. Add the chopped basil and heavy cream. Stir well and then remove from heat. 
2. Prepare the dish
1. Preheat the oven to 375
2. Use a sharp knife or mandoline to slice the vegetables. 
3. Once everything is sliced, stack them in a pattern (I liked doing purple green yellow light green) to make assembly easier.*
4. Spread three-quarters of the sauce into the bottom of your casserole dish (ideally you'll want something smaller than a cake pan, and any shape will do. If you have a circle, use the circle shape and go around the outside of the dish! I had a rectangle, so I kept it simple) 
5. Arrange the vegetables in your casserole dish, packing them tightly.
6. Spoon the remaining sauce in between the vegetables, and around the edges.
7. Cover with foil and bake for 50 minutes
8. Remove foil and bake for another 10
9. Allow the dish to cool 15-20 minutes before serving. 

*When I stacked my veggies, because of the irregular sizes I stacked them right into the dish. 

      

Tips, Suggestions, and Substitutions

Tips & Suggestions

• If you have one veggie significantly differently sized than the others, try cutting it in half or into quarters. I ended up cutting my eggplant slices in half here because it was so huge compared to everything else, and I still doubled up on most of the other layers to make it all fit. I probably could have done quarters to make things a little more uniform but...
• I've said it once and I'll say it again if you don't happen to have vegetables all the same size, don't let that be the reason you don't make this dish. It's still good, and the uniformity doesn't actually matter for taste. I think Ashton would be happy with the uniqueness, personally.
• You can also brush it with olive oil before it goes in the oven to make sure that everything gets a nice color on it while it cooks. I skipped that here, but for no reason (i forgot), so by all means, go for it. 

Substitutions

• If you want to super simplify this recipe, you could almost just use a jar of tomato sauce (aka pasta sauce). But I would recommend still doing onions and garlic bit of this recipe, and still including the Herbes de Province if you can manage it, as they add a unique flavor to the sauce.
• Original Ratatouille is a bit different. It still includes the tomato sauce, but without the onions because you add slices of tomato and onion into your vegetable stacks. These would replace the green squash (light green in color) and the yellow squash. We aren't partial to whole slices of tomato and onion in this house, so I stuck with what I like. 

In Conclusion...

I enjoyed it! The sauce's flavor felt artificially 'deep' for lack of a better word, which I think was the result of too much balsamic. The eggplant, for me, felt the most substantial to bite into of all the vegetables, which I appreciated. My partner found that he was missing a protein or something that really made it a main dish. I agreed that I personally would enjoy this as a side dish. That being said, there's no wrong answer. Make it the star, or set it to the side, either way, it's good! And I would definitely make it again, with maybe a couple of adjustments. 

This recipe came from a few recipes actually. I mixed them together, and changed a few things, specifically swapping out the Onion and Tomato for Green and Yellow squash. But here are my sources (with their official blog names included)

• MidgetMomma.com
• WholesomeYum.com
• TatyanasEverydayFood.com

Let me know if you give this dish a shot. I had a lot of fun making this, myself. For me, the fun is in the learning and the experimentation. All of this for me was new. I hadn't had eggplant before (my partner had). I hadn't ever tried to slice things this thin. I had never tried to arrange things in a casserole dish like this. And I would absolutely do it all again! So, if you make this (and if you have fun) let me know because I love hearing people having a good time cooking. If, as you're working through this recipe or any of the recipes on the blog, you find that you have any questions or suggestions, or if you just wanna say hi, please put all that in the comments below. You can also find me on Pinterest or Twitter, and if you hang out there too, come find me!. Thanks for visiting, and don't forget to love each other. Is it Thursday, yet?

Rigel, Regal, Ratatouille?

Original character art by Hannah at @agarthanguide on Twitter.