Roasted Vegetable Ratatouille

Thanks to a Rat, I Graduated to a Whole New Stew

An occasional series in which staff members share a recipe we turn to time and time again.

College cooking is its own particular beast, even for those who worship Julia Child and Vladimir Nabokov in the same breath. Bigger is always better, and more is better than less, unless you're talking about the work that goes into making food, in which case less is definitely more.

That was the philosophy that nursed my relationship with ratatouille, a dish I vaguely remember tasting on a bygone family vacation to France. "Vaguely" is a severe adverb for someone whose memories of travel are pinned to the brain with thumbtacks of tastings. Ratatouille was nothing special. Still, when I got sick of eating salads during a particularly aggressive dieting stint one semester, I turned to the vegetable stew.

It is a simple, forgiving dish, and I practically made it by the gallon. Nightshade vegetables, lots of onion, no skimping on the garlic and canned tomatoes. All chopped, haphazardly, in large cubes and chucked into a pot with a (sloppy) shake of McCormick dried basil. The stew kept for ages, probably longer than it should have, in my fridge. I used to eat spaghetti sauce straight out of the jar with a spoon, so this was right up my alley.

Refined it was not.

Then, a magical thing happened last month. I met a rat, and I was inspired. His name is Remy. He lives in Paris. He pairs lightning-seared mushrooms with saffron. A rodent after my own heart, if not always my own practice: Here was an artist. His story? One for the ages. "Ratatouille," a movie by Disney's Pixar, is the story of a brilliant aspiring chef, adorable with baby-pink nose and paws but no opposable thumbs, who manages to saute sweetbreads nonetheless. Life is full of challenges.

To drive it all home, the story's namesake and denouement of a dish is my old friend. The film serves up ratatouille in an intimidating wheel of paper-thin eggplant, zucchini and squash baked atop tomato sauce. It's a confit byaldi, made for the movie by Thomas Keller of the French Laundry in Yountville, Calif. The real-life recipe for it boasts more than 20 ingredients and nearly as many steps.

If life were a cooking contest and it came down to me and the rat, the rat would win. Clearly.

Despite my competitive nature, I am okay with that. I am no longer okay, however, with my sorry excuse for ratatouille. I have been woefully negligent, but confit byaldi demands more time than I could ever give.

Surely there must be a happy medium, I thought, so I set off to experiment. Great ratatouille is made by cooking the different kinds of vegetables separately, so that each retains its own flavor and texture. Tossing everything into one pot saves hassle, but homogeneity is a dull oeuvre.

My new version roasts vegetables of contrasting textures and shapes and liberally interprets the label "stew." Baby, almost embryonic, vegetables at the farmers market recently tugged at my heartstrings, so in they went. I also tried for a double dose of tomatoes: a thick sauce plus intense bursts of roasted cherry ones. Nutty fennel, pungent capers, silky eggplant, smoky red pepper and earthy squash combined, perfumed with thyme.

I had outgrown my sloppy college ratatouille.

As for the recipe: Well, everyone should come up with their own version, just as Remy did. You can use whatever gourdlike vegetables are around. Add more squash; skip the zucchini. Swap basil for thyme, leeks for onions, olives for capers. The stew keeps well in the fridge and can be served with anything under the sun. Next to baked chicken or grilled fish; over pasta; or as a salad, atop arugula. My favorite way to eat it is cold, with a just-poached egg on top. To sop it all up with a crusty baguette is to be momentarily transported: not back to college, but somewhere closer to Provence.

Xiyun Yang, who graduated from Brown University in May, is a summer intern for The Post's Business section. She also writes a food column for an English-language monthly, That's Beijing.