It was true in my kitchen for a long time, too. But when I began exploring the cuisines of the Mediterranean, I discovered that beloved ratatouillelike dishes exist just about everywhere you go. It’s no coincidence: Mediterranean cuisines have long had an affinity for eggplant, and eggplant has an affinity for olive oil, garlic and onions. When the new foods that came from the Americas— peppers, summer squash and especiallytomatoes— took hold in the region, a number of closely related dishes were born, including what we call ratatouille— and a man from La Mancha calls pisto, an Ikarian Greek calls soufiko and a Turk calls turlu.
The dishes are all made with abundant olive oil and simmered slowly and for a long time, traditionally in earthenware pots. They are recognizably different, though, because of their seasonings. The beguiling sweet and savory flavors in a Turkish turlu— cinnamon and coriander, fenugreek, mint and dill— are nothing like the earthy flavors in the layered parsley and oregano-seasoned Greek briam, the paprika and vinegar-spiked juices of an Andalusian alboronía or the thyme-scented essence of a ratatouille.
The dishes vary in other ways. In Majorca and Greece, potatoes are added to the mix, which makes these medleys substantial enough to serve as a main dish. You find additional summer vegetables like green beans and okra in the stews from Greece and Turkey. One of my favorites, Catalan samfaina, is often used as a sauce for rabbit, chicken or salt cod. The ingredients are chopped very small, tossed with olive oil and cooked for hours until the mixture is so thick and caramelized that it’s described as a vegetable marmalade. Ligurian rattatuia, almost identical to its cousin and near namesake across the border, can also be classified as a sauce, to accompany gnocchi,pastaor fish.
When you get into the kitchen, know that no two Mediterranean cooks make the same dish exactly the same way. Some Turkish cooks use up to a cup of olive oil when they make turlu, while others rely on a mixture of water, olive oil and tomato purée as a cooking medium. One cook will layer the vegetables after first cooking them in olive oil, then finish the dish in the oven or on a slow burner while another will stir everything together. Majorcan cooks from one village or restaurant may use a pungent tomato sauce in their layered vegetable tumbet; others use simple chopped tomatoes.
In my kitchen, I stray from the authentic recipes. If one-quarter or one-third cup of olive oil will work for a recipe that calls for one-half to one cup, I’ll always go for the lesser amount. You can use more if you prefer the robust flavor, texture and heft of abundant olive oil.
And when I want to brown eggplant, I don’t fry it in batches in oil; I know how thirsty eggplant can be. Instead, I toss all of the eggplant with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and either roast it in the oven or brown it in a heavy nonstick pan.
Sometimes the stews can be watery at the end of cooking. One solution is to wait; time and again, I’ve left turlu or ratatouille overnight to find the juices reabsorbed, the stew thick and satiny the next day. You can also drain the cooked vegetables in a colander set over a bowl and reduce the juices to a thick, intensely flavored syrup that you then pour back over the stew.
These aren’t dishes that you throw together for supper after work. There are a lot of vegetables to chop (and in some cases to sauté) before the long simmer on the stove or in the oven. The simmering is pretty much unattended— an occasional stir if it’s not a layered dish— but you do have to be around.
Your efforts, however, can yield dinner for the rest of the week. The stews always taste better the next day (and the next— you can keep them in the refrigerator for about five days), as the flavors meld and ripen. They’re delicious hot or cold, and they freeze well. Leftovers become new meals as they’re mixed with scrambled or poached eggs (traditional especially in Spain and North Africa), spooned over a piece of fish or mounded onto a bruschetta.
This is time well spent.
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