♪Hey baby I hear the blues are callin', tossed salads and scrambled eggs.♪
Hey, what's up guys? Welcome back to Binging with Babish.
I want to thank you all very much for participating in the Reddit AMA last week.
So, this week, I'm going to be recreating the top voted suggestion which was, Ratatouille.
Now, I've been told by some very emphatic commenters that this is not real ratatouille.
This is something called Confit Byaldi, which is sort of like a modern spin on ratatouille.
So we're going to start off by blanching some tomatoes for about 30 seconds before dropping in an ice bath.
And then we're going to peel them before roasting some peppers: yellow, orange, and red.
Or just red, who cares.
Char on all sides over an open flame until blackened.
Make sure to use metal tongs, not plastic ones like me.
I'm being stupid right now.
Cover the hot steaming pepper with some aluminum foil.
Let them steam in their own steaminess for a few minutes.
This will help soften the peppers and make them a little bit easier to peel, which we're going to do right now.
Peel off all of the black stuff and you're left with these beautiful roasted tri-colored peppers.
Which we're going to combine in a high powered blender with 3 Roma tomatoes,
a few sprigs of parsley, 2 whole garlic cloves, a few sprigs of picked thyme leaves, a quarter of a white onion,
and a little bit of vegetable's stock that we're going to pour in as the blender is running.
A little bit of olive oil before I forget.
Now I don't wanna discolor the mixture too much so I'm also going to use a bit of hot water
before pressing the vegetables down into the blender and creating sort of like a roasted red pepper soup.
The cool thing about high powered blenders is that it actually cooks the mixture if you let it run at high speed long enough.
Now it's time to create those famous shingles of sliced vegetables.
We need to use a very very sharp knife on the tomatoes to create thin little slices,
and then use a mandolin to make life a little easier with one yellow and one green squash.
And then my mandolin kinda sucks so I'm going to slice my eggplant by hand.
Chop a little bit of fresh rosemary to sprinkle over top,
before spreading a thin even layer of our roasted red pepper sauce on the bottom of a rectangular or oval roaster.
Now we're going to start shingling vegetables, alternating in a pattern across the bottom of the dish.
Now this is my first crack and I cut the vegetables a little bit too thick and stacked a little bit too far apart.
We'll revisit that later, for now, drizzle a little bit if olive oil across the top of the vegetables, season with salt, freshly ground pepper, and our finely chopped fresh rosemary,
before topping with a sheet of parchment paper that we cut to the shape of our baking dish,
and placing in a 225 degree oven for about 90 minutes until it comes out looking like this.
Now this tasted really good, but for that Pixar-style plating we need thinner vegetables stacked closer together, cooked for less time, like so.
Into a ring mold we are going to stack some vegetables vertically then horizontally, like so.
Lift off a little bit slower than necessary for a dramatic effect,
swirl some olive oil and leftover red pepper sauce around the outside,
along with some fresh picked parsley leaves,
and let's see if this is good enough to save a restaurant from an evil reviewer.
Ok guys, first things first.
Just bring one fried egg to the party.
Steaming hot!
Flip!
I need to go to the bathroom.
Whoa, whoa, ok, what was in that ratatouille?
Just vegetables, I think. Ok.
Whoops and I forgot Rémy's single chive garnish over top, my bad.
Hang on, let's see if I can remember what happened to my hamster when I was 5...