I was introduced to cooking by a little rodent piloting a young chef by the strands of his hair. 

As I watched what I thought were random ingredients fall into a pot of stew, I was mesmerized by the minute and intricate details of the dish.

After having recently rewatched “Ratatouille” and noticing that tomato season was nearing its end, I decided to work together with my friend to recreate the iconic dish Remy the Rat made for food critic Anton Ego at the end of the movie.

When I first approached the idea of making ratatouille, I didn’t think it would taste all that great. After all, it’s just a vegetable dish, right? 

Wrong.

A seemingly simple dish, ratatouille gains its complexity from the various flavors of the layered Roma tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, squash and the decadent sauce used as its base. 

Ratatouille has an acidic flavor from the tomatoes and serves as a perfect nutrition-dense meal, being incredibly rich with a wave of flavors hitting your taste buds the moment you take your first bite.

The dish’s preparation is pretty simple. We first made the sauce that the vegetables would be layered on by adding a few cloves of minced garlic to the pan, followed by a diced onion. After sweating the onion for around six minutes, we added in finely chopped carrots and let them cook on medium heat with the lid on to soften them.

While waiting for the carrots and onions to soften, we began chopping the vegetables. Using a mandoline, we cut the squash, zucchini, tomato and eggplant to around one-eighth of an inch in thickness and set them aside. 

After the carrots and onions had softened, we added crushed tomatoes along with parsley, basil, salt and pepper. As we let the sauce reduce, I did some more research on ratatouille to make sure there weren’t any last-minute adjustments we needed to make. Turns out, we missed one ingredient that would elevate this dish to a new level: bell peppers.

While I’m not the biggest fan of bell peppers on their own, their addition to the sauce lightened the dish’s taste, helping cut through the richness of the sauce.

After the sauce was reduced to around half the volume, I noticed the vegetables hadn’t dissolved as much as we wanted them to. So, we decided to blend the sauce to give it a smoother, more even consistency.

Preparing to layer the vegetables, we poured roughly an inch-thick layer of the sauce and began placing the vegetable slices on top in a circular, spiral shape going towards the middle of the dish. While we were originally planning on making only one ratatouille, we had enough sauce and vegetables to make a second.

With a brush of olive oil, a sprinkle of salt and pepper and a touch of oregano and parsley, we now had two completed ratatouille ready to go into the oven. Once the oven preheated to 375 degrees, we placed both dishes side by side and left them uncovered to bake for around 50 minutes.

Taking them out of the oven, we were instantly hit with the rich, acidic aroma of the sauce. We decided at the last minute to prepare some pesto for presentation and to act as an extra sauce.

The pesto was simple, as we decided not to make it from scratch. Instead, we mixed some premade pesto from Costco with some whipping cream and lemon juice.

After plating and serving the dish, we finally tasted it.

It was phenomenal.

I couldn’t believe how amazing this dish was. The sauce was incredible with a rich and strong tomato flavor that was brightened by the bell peppers. It was perfectly paired with the freshness of the vegetables layered on top, the flavor coming from the individual flavors of the vegetables instead of relying on spice. 

In the end, despite only requiring half the ingredients of other dishes I have made, it far surpassed any expectations we had and has become one of my favorites. 

There are very few downsides to making this meal, with the cost of the ingredients being around $5 for one dish. Serving this is cheap and relatively easy while taking a moderate amount of time. 

I can wholeheartedly say that this dish is something everyone should try: it is simply delicious. 

I can truly see why Anton shed a tear.