Ratatouille — The Patience a Quiet Week Requires

The week after. There is always a week after. Everything that was compressed and weighted into the 14th slowly decompresses over the following days and you find yourself doing ordinary things — going to the library, doing laundry, making lunch — and feeling almost normal, which is its own kind of strange. The grief is still there but it has gone back to being background noise rather than the whole of the sound.

Student teaching orientation this week. A meeting at the placement school on the southwest side of Chicago — I drove in Tuesday morning, forty-five minutes on the Tri-State. The school is a red brick building built probably in the sixties, the kind of building that smells like floor wax and old lunches. My cooperating teacher is named Ms. Reyes and she is small and extremely organized and runs her classroom with this quiet authority that I immediately wanted to study. She had a corkboard of student photos with their names and a color-coded behavior chart and every single item in the room had a label. I wanted to take notes on everything.

Made chili this week — a big pot, because September weather is chili weather, because I needed something that would last all week and cost almost nothing. A pound of ground beef (two fifty on sale), a can of kidney beans (79 cents), a can of diced tomatoes (89 cents), onion, garlic, chili powder, cumin, cayenne. Browned the beef, added everything else, simmered for forty-five minutes. Cost under five dollars for six servings.

Chili is the comfort food of people who understand that comfort has to be earned through patience — you cannot rush it, you have to let it sit, the flavors need time to find each other. I ate it for dinner four nights running. Ate it on Friday with shredded cheddar and crackers watching the Cubs game. Felt almost like autumn. Felt almost like okay.

The chili I described above is the spirit of this kind of week — but ratatouille is the recipe I keep coming back to when I want something that asks the same patience of me: low heat, time, flavors that need space to settle into each other. If you’ve got a big pot and a few end-of-summer vegetables, this is the meal that will carry you through four nights of dinner without complaint, the kind of thing that tastes better on day three than it did on day one, which feels exactly right for a week that is itself a kind of slow improvement.

Ratatouille

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cook Time: 50 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour 10 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
• 1 medium yellow onion, diced
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 medium eggplant (about 1 lb), cut into 3/4-inch cubes
• 1 medium zucchini, sliced into half-moons
• 1 medium yellow squash, sliced into half-moons
• 1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
• 1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes, with juices
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional)
• 1/4 cup fresh basil leaves, torn, for serving

Instructions

1. Salt the eggplant. Place cubed eggplant in a colander, sprinkle with a pinch of salt, and let sit for 10 minutes. Pat dry with paper towels. This draws out bitterness and helps it hold its shape during cooking.
2. Saute the aromatics. Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a large heavy-bottomed pot or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, for 5–6 minutes until softened. Add the garlic and cook 1 minute more until fragrant.
3. Brown the eggplant. Add the remaining tablespoon of olive oil and the dried eggplant to the pot. Cook over medium-high heat for 5–7 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the eggplant begins to soften and pick up some color on the edges.
4. Add the remaining vegetables. Stir in the zucchini, yellow squash, and red bell pepper. Cook for 4–5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until slightly softened.
5. Build the sauce. Add the diced tomatoes with their juices, tomato paste, thyme, oregano, smoked paprika, salt, black pepper, and red pepper flakes if using. Stir everything together until well combined.
6. Simmer low and slow. Reduce heat to low, cover partially with a lid, and simmer for 30–35 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes, until the vegetables are very tender and the liquid has reduced into a thick, jammy sauce. Taste and adjust salt as needed.
7. Rest and serve. Remove from heat and let sit uncovered for 5 minutes before serving. Top with fresh torn basil. Serve over crusty bread, polenta, or rice — or eat it straight from the pot with a spoon, which is also correct.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 135 | Protein: 3g | Fat: 7g | Carbs: 17g | Fiber: 5g | Sodium: 310mg