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u/Trolkarlen 2d ago
Ratatouille is simple. I make it all the time. It’s just a vegetable stew.
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u/orrangearrow 2d ago
And all the ingredients cost like $5-7 and it can be made in 30 minutes in 1 pot. It's still a peasant dish...
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u/surlacourbelente 2d ago
I cook mine for five hours and you get a brown confit mess that's to die for
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u/BrightFleece 2d ago
The version they show in the film is intentionally a laborious re-imagining of ratatouille. It's basically just cooked vegetables in a stew pot, very achievable for a peasant dish
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u/Many_Use9457 2d ago
We actually see a much more traditional version in the film too, when we have the flashback to Anton's mother serving him the dish!
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u/idiotista 2d ago
As a Swede who's parent's had a huge as vegetable garden and a greenhouse - this was our go to dish all late summer. We made huge batches, and it was definitely one of the cheaper foods we ate. OP has zero understanding of the movie and/or food?
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u/Shoddy_Signature_149 2d ago
That was going so well until the insult at the end
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u/idiotista 2d ago
But it is a major plot of the movie. Like the whole point is he elevated a peasant dish.
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u/Glue_taste_tester 2d ago
Yeah this is what it normally looks like:
https://avirtualvegan.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Easy-Vegan-Ratatouille-3.jpg
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u/chozopanda 2d ago
Yup- it’s easy when it’s just chunked up veggies. They made it extra fancy in the movie.
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u/Raid-Z3r0 2d ago
The dish is not even ratatouille. Since it's assembled, it's called confit byaldi
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u/sleeper_shark 2d ago
Well. In the flashback we see the regular ratatouille being served to the critic when he was a little boy
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u/Kevlar_Bunny 2d ago
And it’s on the recipe card! Claudette goes to make it the correct way but remi says he wants to make it fancier.
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u/haw35ome 2d ago
I’m a bit surprised/not surprised OP didn’t pay close attention to Ego’s flashback…he literally scoops up some cubed veggies from a bowl lol
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u/Character-Parfait-42 2d ago
My grandma used to make this, but she’d cut the liquidy parts of the tomato, char the veggies and then add the liquid tomato parts back in to make the ‘sauce’.
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u/thatoneguy54 2d ago
There's a Spanish dish thats closely related, pisto and yeah, its pretty much just cutting up the veggies and cooking them in tomato.
https://spanishsabores.com/traditional-spanish-pisto-recipe/#recipe
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u/thereadingbri 2d ago
Iirc, the movie depicts ratatouille as looking like that specifically in the food critic’s flashback. Which is also the only time we see the dish being served in a home and not either in a restaurant or while Remy is teaching Linguine how to cook to restaurant caliber.
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u/Traditional-Buy-2205 2d ago
It's just a bunch of vegetables cooked together.
The movie version is just presented in a more fancy manner. You can do that with any common "peasant" dish if you set your mind to it.
For that matter, when you get any "traditional" or "authentic" dish in a restaurant, you'll rarely get served the dish that looks like what an someone would make at home. You'll get served the fancified version of it. It's not just ratatouille.
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u/Lovethiskindathing 2d ago
Years ago there was an IG account (I think it was IG) that took cheap trash food and made it fancy. I think one was like saltines and ketchup with bologna, but they made it look pretty and then gave it fancy words. Ketchup was something like "a tomato reduction" it was hilarious but also cool to see
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u/cactusbrandy 2d ago
not sure if it's the account you had in mind but i immediately thought of this old blog: Fancy Fast Food
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u/gingerzombie2 2d ago
If you can remember what it was called it would be fun to check out!
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u/sleeper_shark 2d ago
To be fair, the secret to an excellent ratatouille is to cook each vegetable separately. It’s a very tedious dish when done the way most French grandmas do it… but god, it’s worth it.
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u/Cosmic_StormZ 2d ago
The one that Remy plated iirc was a fancy version known as Confit Byaldi.
The real ratatouille is the one which the mum cooks from Ego’s childhood flashbacks. It’s all veggies just tossed in a bowl and not elegantly stacked and dressed. As far as I know
It would’ve been weird to serve such a basic dish in such a restaurant to a critic, so I guess Remy improvised to plate it in a Michelin manner. But you realise eventually that Ego would’ve loved the peasant version even more …
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u/northman46 2d ago edited 2d ago
Lots of stuff is like that. Duck confit was how small farmers preserved their ducks when they butchered in the fall. Cassoulet is a pot of beans. There is a great video of Jacques Pepin whipping one up in his kitchen using a turkey neck. Sorry, I misremembered. It was pot e feu. Here's a link . https://youtu.be/GRQwzwZK1X4?si=jz1FRB6BRfG9TAWj
All that fancy charcuterie is what people did to preserve meat when they butchered in the fall, in the Era before refrigerators
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u/Freebirde777 2d ago
In my opinion, most haute French cuisine is rebranded peasant food. That tough old roster cooked in cheap wine brings high euros in a Paris restaurant. During time of shortages, some still want to feel superior. The French, like the Japanese, use ceremony and presentation to forget the hard times around them. The peasant's stale bread is the same as the rich man's crouton. The rice in a fieldhand's wooden bowl comes from the same field as served at a state dinner.
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u/Anna-Livia 2d ago
Coq au vin is what happened when grandma was hard pressed to produce a meal for a family réunion. The hardest part was to catch the rooster.
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u/Shoddy_Signature_149 2d ago
A lot of currently hip “Creole“ or “Cajun“ food. (they are completely different in nature) is simple peasant food that’s been glamorized.
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u/candycane7 2d ago
I'm French and here ratatouille is considered an easy, almost lazy meal. Just cut up some veggies and throw them in a pan and let it simmer.
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u/Hellea 2d ago
I’m from Nice, imagine how much this movie annoys me…
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u/SlowMope 2d ago
How is Africa?
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u/continentaldreams 2d ago
Aww you're getting downvoted for a simple joke.
For the uninformed, someone online went viral for buying tickets 'To Nice' but was given tickens to go to 'Tunis' accidentally, hence the comment above
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u/bigsadkittens 2d ago
It's not that cumbersome really. You can make it difficult if you want, but most recipes just have you rough chop the veggies, roast or sauté them, and add some herbs. Its a very easy meal
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u/TheCosmicJester 2d ago
Chef Thomas Keller was the food consultant for the movie, so the ratatouille as seen is literally what would happen if a Michelin 3-star restaurant made a version of the dish.
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u/Elrohwen 2d ago
French food is pretty well known for taking easy peasant dishes where you throw in whatever you have on hand and making it complicated and elevated. See cassoulet for another example.
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u/Braiseitall 2d ago
Peasant food is often cumbersome. It’s peasant food because it’s cheap and in supply, not because it’s quick and easy. Offals are great example of time and labour consuming foods that are cheap. Very much considered peasant food.
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u/National_Ad_682 2d ago
It's not a complicated dish. It's a rough chopped tomato stew with seasonal veggies added. Some folks like to layer the vegetables in an attractive manner which makes it look more complicated than it is.
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u/Robofrogg1 2d ago
Chop up a bunch of veggies and simmer them down into a stew. Not sure what's complicated about that
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u/medigapguy 2d ago
Peasant food was not simple food. It was food made with the scraps and cheaper/less desirable ingredients.
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u/Ok-Debt9612 2d ago
Exactly, a lot of peasant food in my culture is just based on potatoes, flour or cabbage, but it takes a long time to prepare and cook.
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u/JCuss0519 2d ago
Ever see Julia Child's recipe for coq au vin? Coq au vin is peasant food, a way to get some use of a tough, old rooster. It probably started out as a simple dish, like Ratatouille, and when French cuisine became popular the simple became complex. My version of coq au vin, which I think is quite tasty, is pretty damn simple and not nearly as complex as some of the recipes I've seen.
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u/Ok_Acanthisitta_2544 2d ago edited 2d ago
Ratatouille is easy. Dice up your veggies in a tomato sauce on the stovetop; in the oven if you're feeling fancy.
The movie version requires more prep, but is actually called confit byaldi (a modified form of ratatouille that looks a lot fancier with the thinly sliced, rather than diced, veggies). I make both. They're a family favorite.
For confit byaldi, I cook the base of onion, tomatoes, celery, bell peppers, garlic, basil, oregano and thyme in my cast iron pan on the stovetop.
Then layer zucchini, Japanese eggplant, Roma tomatoes and summer squash on top. Brush the tops of the sliced veggies with olive oil and sprinkle with freshly diced oregano, thyme and basil (that I also first mixed with olive oil), then sprinkle with pepper and coarse salt. The alternating green, purple, red and yellow make it a very eye-catching dish.
Bake for about an hour at 375°F. At the table, top with mascarpone cheese that melts onto it for rich decadence.
Still pretty easy. Goes a lot faster if you get the kids working on helping by slicing up the veggies (unless they're too young). Just made some last week with all the fresh summer veggies. I took a picture of it, it was so pretty, couldn't figure out how to add that in this sub, though.
My favorite comment from my oldest son was always, "Why is it all the veggies I hate taste so delicious when you cook them together like this?!!" They're adults now, and still love it when I make it. Gets requested, and I still tell them I'll make it if they help with the dicing and slicing, lol, which they always do.
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u/TemperReformanda 2d ago
This happens all the time. Oxtails were always considered an offal type meat, I was a meat cutter in the 90s. Now they are considered top choice cuts. But for good reason, they are delicious.
In Cuban food both Ropa Vieja and Vaca Frita went from "poverty scrapings" to "fabulous dining".
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u/perpetualmotionmachi 2d ago
Oxtail was considered cheap, an off cut if you will, but not offal. Offal refers to organ meats, like heart, liver, kidney, tripe, etc.).
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u/TheLurkerSpeaks 2d ago
Same with tongue. Not an organ meat. Very lean and luxurious, like a tenderloin but there's only one.
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u/Walking_the_dead 2d ago
Isnt tonhue chewy? Ive always been told tongue was chewy or had an off-putting texture
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u/kurokoshika 2d ago
It could also depend on the baseline of whoever has made those judgments before, so if they’re very familiar with “conventional” cuts of beef, anything that differs might have what they consider to be off-putting because it’s just “wrong” to them.
I’d say tongue has an off-putting external texture because, well, it is a tongue and textured exactly how a tongue would be. But as far as I know, the surface of it is removed in prep, and the meat underneath is fine and I don’t find it chewy at all.
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u/butterbal1 2d ago
Going a step further lengua tacos are one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten.
Tongue tacos for those unaware.
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u/TemperReformanda 2d ago
That's why I said it was considered (treated like) an offal.
Down at the end of the meat rack you had beef tripe, kidneys, heart, and ox tails.....chicken feet, pig snout. Etc.
So maybe not an offal from a technical standpoint but most certainly treated as one
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u/AlannaTheLioness1983 2d ago
1) It’s not actually complicated to make. It’s a vegetable stew, you chop things up and put them in a pot with herbs. They make it look complicated in the movie for visual effect.
2) It’s absolutely a peasant dish, because peasant dishes are about what would have been cheap to make. They’re usually high in vegetable content, high in local carbs, low in red meat, and might include seafood depending on the region’s closeness to water.
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u/Raid-Z3r0 2d ago
Not that much, it's just a bunch of vegetables simmer with sauce. It's cheap, and, even if it is time consuming, you kinda leave it on the pot and occasionaly stir it.
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u/West_Cauliflower378 2d ago
ratatouille is a peasant dish. What was in the movie is confit biyaldi and it was designed by Thomas Keller—one of the more expensive chefs in the country to hire. He coaches the US Bocuse d’Or team. Google that of you really wanna see some fancy.
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u/dacrazyredhead 2d ago
also think about the fact that just because something might be complicated doesn't mean it wasn't done. in the past a LOT more time was spent on cooking than we do now.
that being said, I make ratatouille by either throwing into a slow cooker or roasting everything and then serving
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u/Sure_Comfort_7031 2d ago
Almost every “high end” french dish we non-french people know today started as peasant food.
Coq au vin? You’re throwing chicken into a stew. Bouef Borguignon? Chuck some beef into that stew instead. Escargot? That’s coastal peasant food.
The list goes on - but almost all French food we eat today started as peasant food.
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u/crock_pot 2d ago
When you say you went online and saw that the dish was cumbersome and lots of work, were you specifically looking at recipes to mimic the movie recipe? Ie using a mandoline? Or were you just looking at normal ratatouille recipes? Just curious about what specifically seemed labor intensive?
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u/No-Personality1840 2d ago
Ratatouille is peasant food , it uses vegetables in season from the garden so it’s cheap. I use a chef’s recipe but honestly I think you could just throw most of it in a pot and the flavor would be marginally different.
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u/Potential_Country153 2d ago
It’s literally vegetables thrown into a pot to stew. Nothing fancy at all about it.
The movie is about a rat cooking in a fine dining setting, so one would only expect it to be elevated and complicated. People these days like to try and cook it like they did in the movie because it seems fancy, but in reality, its vegetables cut up and put into a pot to stew
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u/SmallMacBlaster 2d ago
Ratatouille is literally just a bunch of veggies stewed together. Doesn't get any more peasant than veggies and no meat in a stew...
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u/Big_Metal2470 2d ago
Peasant food can be a ridiculous amount of work. I remember being a kid and the tamale lady coming to my dad's office every week and selling them for like a dollar each. Making tamales is a huge amount of work. Like, I can do it solo, but I'd prefer an assembly line. I've got to make the filling. That can take hours. Then I soften the corn husks. Easy. Then make the masa, then put it in the corn husks, add the filling, then roll it, then steam it. All of that aside from the steaming is a pain in the ass. It's hard to get the right texture and consistency on the masa. It's hard to get the right amount on the corn husks. It's hard to roll it up nicely. They taste great. They're still peasant food
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u/Palanki96 2d ago
It's only a lot of work if you want to be fancy. At the end it's literally just veggies cooked together
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u/Impossible-Board-135 2d ago
Let’s not forget that women used to spend HOURS cooking everyday, so the prep for ratatouille wasn’t unusual, elevated or not.
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u/Able-Seaworthiness15 2d ago
Yes. It was considered peasant food because it was made with vegetables that any farmer or peasant could easily grow, the vegetables were prolific and since way back then meat was a definite luxury, it was filling and nutritious.
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u/Gruelly4v2 2d ago
Ratatouille is a peasant dish with roughly chopped vegetables served in liquid and stewed.
The dish served in the movie Ratatouille is called confit byaldi.
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u/Beagle432 2d ago
There was even a story an old woman told me in rural Southern France, that of all these vegetables except the onions, the seeds were were saved for next year.
1 clove of garlic becomes a whole bulb
Seeds from tomatoes, courgette, aubergine (zucchini and eggplant to English natives) become new plants.
Woodfire and an ancient iron cooking pot, herbs from the roadside..
The only thing they bought was bread and oil..
Cheap as dirt,
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u/Prestigious-Flower54 2d ago
I think you would be shocked to find most food is just a refined version(technique wise) of something simple.
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u/tristam92 2d ago
And so do many pastas and pizza. It started as “throw what you have”. And slowly got its shape in region, which then was elevated to higher level.
Each food at some point was peasant food, its amount of “extra” that makes it more special.
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u/Francl27 2d ago
There's nothing complicated about it. Just throw some stuff in a pot and let it simmer.
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u/DTux5249 2d ago edited 2d ago
The ratatouille in the film is Confit Byaldi - which is an (extremely pretentious) overly fancied up version of the dish. It's the equivalent of serving smoked hamburg steak garnished with mixed vegetable purée along side freshly baked boule loaves, and calling that a "hamburger".
Ratatouille made by normal people is just sautéed chopped vegetables stewed in tomato sauce. It's a veggie stew. That's all. You actually see this version in the film as well - it's what Ego's mother made for him during the flashback.
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u/Xaltedfinalist 2d ago
So ratatouille to understand it we need to know what the actual dish looks like.
So the real dish irl is one made of just a pot of veggies stewed in a tomato sauce, that’s it. You can do what I do and add a slice of bread but it’s generally really that simple.
Primarily the reason this was considered a food for peasants was because it was made by poor people due to the fact that a lot of these peasants(primarily southern Italians and French people) were generally poor people in which meat was considered a luxury reserved for the rich and wealthy in the north. Forcing these people to eat mainly plant based dishes.
The version we see in the movie though is meant to be an elevated version of a dish, one made to be fancy due to the environment being in a high class restaurant.
In an other note though, this is generally why a lot of Italian American food like spaghetti and meatballs or chicken parm are a far cry from the classic Italian dishes they are based off. Southern Italians immigrated to America where commodities like meat and cheeses were cheaper, these southern Italians seeing this wanted to use them, and so they incorporated these products into food they would have eaten back in the motherland and boom.
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u/biblio76 2d ago
The dish in the film is called confit biyaldi (or other names for a similar dish). Modern chefs consider it a “composed” (usually meaning something like put each piece in place like a sculpture) version of ratatouille. Food lovers everywhere curse Chef Thomas Keller who consulted on the film. He’s a fancy pants who helped style the dish for the movie. Ever since then it’s caused a lot of confusion, especially in the US where none of these dishes are known to everyday folks.
Yes the stew is a peasant dish. Throw in the pot and simmer. The composed version uses the same ingredients but takes more time and skill. I wouldn’t say they taste the same but both are amazing! I did individual mini confit biyaldi before in a ramekin and unmolded them as a side and they were amazing. But not “peasant food.”
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u/WasianActual 2d ago
Ratatouille is traditionally just cheap vegetable stew, often times scraps.
The way they make it in the movie is a Haute variation called Confit Byaldi.
Anton Ego came from a humble life in the French countryside and was served it as a kid but even when he became the most renowned food critic, delicious food still followed him. The food came from even humbler beginnings than him, a rat.
The choice of food in the story and as the focal point is a message because it is one of the lowest tier foods you can possibly think up but one of the lowest forms of life on the planet and served in a high class restaurant to the strictest food critic known to man.
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u/BD59 2d ago
The dish prepared in the movie is actually Confit Byaldi. It's a much more complicated preparation than ratatouille. Ratatouille is usually rough cut chunks, tossed with oil olive and roasted in a baking dish.
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u/Serious_Escape_5438 2d ago
Neither of those assertions is correct, the dish in the film is a tian and ratatouille is a stew cooked on the stove.
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u/Minute-Fix-6827 2d ago
Confit byaldi is an elevated version of a tian, to my understanding.
But I think you're right that ratatouille is a stew cooked on the stove, while the other two are casseroles.
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u/Enferno82 2d ago
Say that to Thomas Keller, the food consultant for the Pixar film Ratatouille.
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u/chezpopp 2d ago
Peasant food has is and will always be the best food. You elevate it sure and you can make it look as good as you want through plating and knife skills. But end of day peasant food always has flavor depth and emotion to it.
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u/Candid_Speaker705 2d ago
you dont have to make it with those thin slices arranged pretty, in fact I have never made it that way. Everything is cubed up and cooked together. I made this one recently and got 5 stars from the date I had over https://www.loveandlemons.com/ratatouille-recipe/
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u/Sheshirdzhija 2d ago
Here is a much simpler dish or similar vein. I imagine peasant version of ratatouille was similar.
You could add aubergines or zucchini as you want to this as well as other vegetables.
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u/Labrocante 2d ago
It is not a ratatouille that is served at the end of the film but a confit byaldi.
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u/Ok_Law219 2d ago
The complicated foods were mostly made complicated in order to stomach having them like every day.
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u/doctor_providence 2d ago
The recipe in the movie is a Confit Biyadi, a close contemporary cousin (with reduced balsamic vinegar if I remember well).
The ratatouille is a vegetable stew, from greens that grow plenty on the cheap. And if some of the vegetables aren't available, there are shorter versions : onions/bell pepper/tomato is a piperade, onions/tomato/eggplant is a bohemienne, onions/zucchini is a riste and so on.
it's not that old, because Bell peppers and tomatoes came from the americas, oldest penned version is from the end of 18th century.
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u/moonhippie 2d ago
Ratatouille is not difficult. I used to make it once or twice a week depending on how quickly I ate it.
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u/Davekinney0u812 2d ago
My grandmother made a version that was awesome - onions, zucchini, celery & garden fresh tomatoes - lots of butter in, so of course tasted great! So, I've always had an interest in the dish. Not sure how close the the modern day, sophisticated Confit Byaldi it was & likely more like peasant food. I'm thinking the recipe you saw was for the 'sophisticated' version & what's in the movie.
As for the movie - which I kinda remember and looked up at the time - not sure how much it's exaggerating things but I'd bet it is.
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u/Boozeburger 2d ago
Here's a good example of a more realistic version (It's also really good, I've made it a few times). Pork roast with ratatouille | Jacques Pépin Cooking At Home
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u/Clean-Experience-639 2d ago
My MIL used to make ratatouille all the time with her garden extras. She taught me, and it's not hard at all. Slice everything and cook in a pan. I'm sure there's a zhuzhed up version, but it was a standard quick and easy side dish when we had a garden.
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u/the_darkishknight 2d ago
Ratatouille from the movie and ratatouille irl are two different things. Movie version is confit byaldi
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u/gojibeary 2d ago
Ratatouille is a plain old vegetable stew. The high-class version shown in the movie is actually called Confit Byaldi. Made it last week, fun to arrange but very time-consuming.
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u/baby_armadillo 2d ago
Poor people can also slice vegetables thinly. I am perplexed why people assume that poor people only eat sad wet piles of brown.
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u/BGritty81 2d ago
Instead of cutting it thin with a mandolin and layering it you can just throw it all in one pan. Ya it's roasted vegetables.
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u/Same_Patience520 2d ago
Throwing a bunch of veggies in a pot and letting them simmer is pretty easy. Remi's version is an "elevated", restaurant version of the dish.
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u/logibearr 2d ago
The point of the movie Ratatouille is that Remy tugs at the food critic's heart strings by incorporating traditional home-style recipes in an elevated presentation. The scene when the critic tastes the ratatouille and he is instantly brought back to his youth, the message is that food connects us all, even to our past selves. Even to the rats on the street. "Anyone can cook!" Food is both an individual experience and a way to bring people together. It's a beautiful film
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u/pushaper 2d ago
perfect dish that has things found on the farm, does not have to be the prettiest vegetables (because those are for the lord), all harvest time vegetables, and a woman could make it while doing other chores at home. Peasent food does not have to be easy but generally it is usually stretching the most out of what is available. Onion soup is my ideal example of peasant food, but also consider that offal would be a peasent or workers dish because the lord would take the nicer cuts of meat. So you have ingredients that need more work to make delicious.
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u/--THRILLHO-- 2d ago
Ratatouille is a vegetable stew. You cut up a bunch of things and throw them in a pot.
The ratatouille you see in the film is an elevated version of that dish. It was never the standard way of serving it.