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All the publicity for Ratatouille the movie makes me want to get in the kitchen and make ratatouille the dish. The first ratatouille I made was from the Vegetarian Epicure cookbook, which is still in print. I think the mysterious name attracted me to the dish as much as anything, because heaven knows it wasn’t my great love of eggplant.

Since that day back in the Seventies, I’ve made the dish dozens (scores?) of times. I’ve never made it the high falutin’ way, which requires separate pans for cooking the eggplant, the squash, the onions and the peppers; I’m way too lazy to dirty that many pans. I have tried other combinations and proportions, different orders of battle, and some different ingredients than the VE recipe called for, and they’ve all been good. The VE recipe seems unique among the recipes I’ve seen and used in that it includes a hot pepper (an addition I like) and cucumber (which I’m indifferent to).

Nowadays, though, when I get my hands on good fresh eggplant and peppers, I just cook ratatouille. I might use canned tomatoes if I have to. I might use herbs or not. No matter what, this dish seems to be a combination that is going to be great no matter what (and no matter what purists might say).

In researching recipes as I prepared to write one up for the Lawrence Farmers Market, I came across this link for ratatouille made three ways from the same set of ingredients. I thought I’d pass the link along and let you choose the approach you’d like.

It’ll probably be a couple more weeks at least before I’ll be making it, though. Our unusually erratic weather this year seems to have delayed many produce items. If you’ve got the goods, though, I say throw them in the pot—and add a hot pepper for fun.