S6 E18: Julia Child's Ratatouille Recipe

This week on the podcast, Heather tackles a recipe for ratatouille, the classic French vegetable casserole. The recipe she uses is from none other than Julia Child, and if you've read one of her recipes, you know that can sometimes be a challenge in itself. Let's go! 

Ratatouille is usually made with eggplant, squash, tomatoes, onion and peppers. It's obviously going to be better when these are in season, but we had it mid-winter and it was still delicious. You can even use canned tomatoes if that's your best option. Heather discovers the key to this recipe is cooking each of the veggies separately (well, the eggplant and squash together, and the onions and peppers together). It's also important to cut them into similar sizes. Oh, and salt the eggplant and squash in advance so they sweat out extra moisture and keep their structure. 

In the end, following Julia's long-winded instructions was well worth it. We'd tried ratatouille before that was all baked together at the same time, and it wasn't nearly as satisfying as this method of cooking each thing separately and then assembling it at the end. Plus this is all prepared on the cooktop, which made it super easy and didn't require turning on the oven. 

Bon appétit!

Get the ratatouille recipe! 

Other stuff mentioned in this episode:

- S2 E2: Bon Appétit, a CIFF Special

- Coq au Vin recipe

- Eggplant Parmesan recipe

- Spiced Eggplant Pide recipe

- Dijon Salmon with Capers recipe

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Transcript

Heather (00:11)
will this be the Ratatouille that Erin can say she likes?

we'll I have success with the Julia Child recipe? Maybe that's the question I should be asking.

Welcome to Three Kitchens podcast. Here we are again.

Okay, I'm Heather and over here with me is my co-host Erin.

Erin W (00:30)
Hello.

Heather (00:31)
And today I thought, why not do another Julia Child recipe? Why not? And the reason I say why not is because I know you were gonna go, you know how we all feel about Julia Child recipes. They're like, a little long winded, something to kind of aspire to. Sometimes it's not good.

Erin W (00:40)
Okay.

a little long-winded.

Heather (00:55)
description, sometimes too much description, not good practical instruction. So.

Erin W (01:02)
sometimes 55

steps before you start. And now you start cooking your ingredients and you're like, my gosh, it's been two hours.

Heather (01:10)
Yeah,

yeah, but I've chosen something that I think will be fairly simple and approachable and something we can all do, and that is a ratatouille. Are you familiar with ratatouille?

Erin W (01:26)
I'm not super familiar with it, so I think I tried making it once very long time ago.

Heather (01:36)
I'm in the exact same boat. And when I made it, I followed a recipe and it made a beautiful sort of spiral. You you cut all the veggies ⁓ in a similar shape, but it's this nice colorful thing. Julia's recipe is not quite like that. ⁓ And no, Ratatouille is not a rat in an animated Disney film. That, yeah.

Erin W (01:38)
Okay.

Yes.

Okay.

You may know him.

Heather (02:03)
That rat was named Ratatouille, I think? Or maybe the whole show was named Ratatouille? I don't know, but I have always thought it was the rat that was named Ratatouille. I don't think it is.

Erin W (02:12)
I'm not familiar enough with that show to tell you.

Heather (02:15)
was very cute, but anyways, it has nothing to do with rats. Okay, all right, let me tell you. So according to my quick research, y'all know this is not a food research, historical, historically accurate podcast. Let me just say that right now. I'm a little gun shy about giving any history of recipes, okay? Okay, so it is a traditional.

Provençal dish, I think that's how you say that, originating in Nice, France. And it is basically a vegetable, it's kind of like a vegetable stew or casserole. So usually it's summer vegetables like eggplant, zucchini, peppers, tomatoes, and kind of putting it all together in a beautiful dish.

And that traditionally, according to Julia Child's recipe, the pieces are similar size, but they're cubed, and then it's mixed together. So it is not in a shape of beautiful. The presentation is not like what somebody must have taken it and gone, ooh, we can make this look pretty, right?

Erin W (03:16)
Okay.

Mmm.

I have seen rettuis where they've like sliced everything

thinly in the round and then they sit like dominoed over on each other like back and forth kind of in a dish. Yeah.

Heather (03:34)
Yeah.

Yeah, you get the chevron or you get a spiral and it's really beautiful. But that's not how Julia Child apparently made it. And I'm guessing it wasn't done that traditionally either. It was probably done more like this, right?

Erin W (03:40)
Yeah.

What did her IG

followers say?

Heather (03:54)
⁓ She's so lucky she didn't have social media. All she had to do was pioneer cooking on television. I mean, anybody could.

Erin W (03:57)
⁓ man.

Yeah. And it was black

and white. She could have been using anything in those dishes.

Heather (04:05)
⁓

That's so true. If anybody listening is a fan of Julia Child, you can go back. We have another episode about Julia Child. We went to or we watched a documentary about her. Remember? And then we recorded on site at the Calgary International Film Festival.

Erin W (04:25)
Gosh, that's right. Yes.

That's right. Yup.

Heather (04:32)
which is called CIFF And

they had a thing where they invited podcasters to come and use their studios and talk about something related to film or the festival. And that movie was showing at the festival. And so I just, I don't remember it really well. I know we sort of talked about our thoughts on the show and then we, and then at the end, remember us all imitating Julia, Bon Appetit! Which was really fun.

Erin W (04:56)
Yes, because that's what you have to do. And

whenever you talk about Julia Child, you have to imitate her gusto for life in the kitchen.

Heather (05:01)
You do.

We even had the engineer who was there helping us, the sound person do it, remember?

Erin W (05:12)
And you've

also made, did you follow, no, you originally thought of following her Coq au vin recipe, wasn't it? And then you were like, man, there are too many steps here, so you found a cheater one or like a less involved one.

Heather (05:29)
That's a good question. don't remember now where.

Erin W (05:32)
I remember

the Coq au Vin and Julia Child coming together, but I don't know if they stayed together throughout the episode.

Heather (05:35)
Okay.

That's a good question.

Well, I have found this recipe on juliacchildsrecipes.com. I haven't looked into it yet to tell you who runs this website. Like if they've simplified it, the instructions look relatively, no, actually they do look quite long. was gonna say, it looks like somebody may have edited it, but now that I look again, maybe not. ⁓

Erin W (06:00)
Hahaha

Heather (06:06)
But the difference here with the way that, you know, when we're talking about those sort of adapted recipes where it's like in shapes or it looks really pretty is it's all put together that way and then baked. This, you're cooking each vegetable separately and then bringing it together at the end.

Erin W (06:19)
Mm-hmm.

this is so Julia Child.

Heather (06:28)
Right?

Erin W (06:30)
Or maybe it's

French cooking. Maybe we shouldn't just be throwing her under the bus, but she is the one bringing us the French, so.

Heather (06:33)
Hmm.

She brought the French to, well, to the United States and the rest of us. Yeah. So you do kind of warm it all together at the end, but everything has been cooked separately. And I imagine seasoned as I haven't gone into detail. So it's a little bit different. And so I just...

Erin W (06:39)
You shall die on that hill.

Okay.

But of course.

Heather (07:01)
You know, I don't know why I decided I was going to do this. I've been thinking about doing something veggie. And originally I was thinking of doing the fancy one,

Erin W (07:06)
Mm. Did you like?

Right, so did you like the Ratatouille that you made years back?

Heather (07:15)
I remember thinking it was fine. I wasn't like, I love it. It's the best thing I've ever eaten.

Erin W (07:20)
It clearly didn't like stick around to make a second appearance. And I remember not liking the one I made much either.

Heather (07:27)
⁓

shit. I'm in trouble. We don't even like it.

Erin W (07:31)
But

I also didn't really know how to work with eggplant at that point. And I remember the texture the eggplant being off. I have since cooked with eggplant. I've gotten over that, whatever I messed up in my earlier days, but I was just wondering if it, for us, it was a memorable.

Heather (07:36)
Hey.

Hello?

Erin W (07:53)
⁓ I don't like this vegetable moment. But I'm thinking that when you cook everything separately as per its

Heather (07:55)
Well.

Yes, yes.

Erin W (08:04)
then it will turn out better than whatever I haphazardly threw together when I was not great at cooking.

Heather (08:15)
Yeah, we

have had some successful eggplant dishes. I really liked the eggplant. Now I'm trying to think of, do you remember the Turkish? Yes, I love the eggplant parmesan. That was the, I have made that since a couple of times. It's so good. But there was one that I made to put on the Turkish pita.

Erin W (08:20)
⁓ indeed.

Parmesan?

⁓

Yes, so good.

The sabik.

Heather (08:37)
No, no, not the Sabich The Pide P-I-D-E, Pide And it had that spiced eggplant on top. I don't know.

Erin W (08:38)
No? Oh! The Pide The Pide Yeah! Yeah!

Yes, and those like crunchy,

fresh. Mm.

Heather (08:51)
God, we should have looked it up so we'd actually know

what to call these things. ⁓ it so good. That was delicious. ⁓ This here says that you're gonna cook the summer squash and eggplant. Okay, this is where I want your quick input on the instructions, because I don't quite understand. Okay.

Erin W (08:55)
It was really good. Yeah. Yeah.

Yes, my track record

is you should ask me more questions.

Heather (09:16)
Can you translate, Julia? Can we? Okay. Take a skillet and put four tablespoons of olive oil into it. Got it. Saute the summer squash and eggplant one layer at a time for about one minute until they vegetables, oops typo, until the vegetables are slightly browned. So one layer at time, that just means single layer. Don't pile in more vegetables. Yeah, okay.

Erin W (09:18)
Thanks.

I'm going to say don't crowd your pan or they'll release moisture and you'll end

up with mush instead of brown.

Heather (09:46)
Right, so they already have been sweated. ⁓

Erin W (09:49)
Yeah, so I would say like

get your pan smoking hot, which also means your oil is going to be splattery and scary because I recently burnt myself sauteing up some zucchini where, you know, I put a pan on the stove, I put the olive oil in and then I turned around and did something else. Then five minutes later I was like, I got to put the squash in. It's like, it's it's not brown yet. It's not totally smoking. But then when I

Heather (09:53)
Yeah, it doesn't say how hot.

Erin W (10:15)
dumped my pre-cut veggies in there was a bit of a pshhh and that was like ahhh burning hot oil but then they brown really nice so I mean

Heather (10:21)
⁓ yeah.

doesn't mention

how hot. This is one of the problems with some of Julia's recipes, right? You don't you kind of have to translate it.

Erin W (10:35)
You just gotta know that it's gotta be a hot pan.

Heather (10:37)
And they're only supposed to be slightly like for one minute until they are slightly browned. So this is going to be a quick okay okay.

Erin W (10:42)
Yeah, that's a smokin' hot pan with

like a handful at a time. Shhh, shhh, shhh, shhh. That would be my official.

Heather (10:47)
Thank

Erin W (10:50)
opinion. ⁓

Heather (10:51)
Hey,

I'll take it because any help I can get I probably need. Okay, so that's it. Stay tuned to hear how it turns out and what we think and

Erin W (10:57)
Cool.

Heather (11:01)
will this be the Ratatouille that Erin can say she likes? I could come up. ⁓

Erin W (11:08)
I'm sure it'll be better

than anything I've made in the past.

Heather (11:12)
We'll see. Julia, we'll see. I have success with the Julia Child recipe? Maybe that's the question I should be asking. Time will tell.

Erin W (11:19)
Indeed.

Heather (11:43)
Okie dokie. Let's get into Julia Child's Ratatouille recipe. I have to say this was simpler than many Julia Child recipes. So if I have freaked you out with her name alone, if you're familiar with like the joy of cooking and you're like, no, no way I'm making one of her recipes because it take me all day and I don't understand what I'm doing. No.

Erin W (11:56)
good.

Heather (12:09)
Actually, this one was quite simple. ⁓ So don't be scared. Okay. Okay. We're going to start out. ⁓ We're going to have the same amount of eggplant and zucchini or squash. You could do summer squash if you like.

Erin W (12:14)
Fabulous.

Heather (12:26)
So the recipe says a pound of each, but I think as long as you have roughly the same amount, because you want it to be an equal sort of an equal amount of these two ⁓ ingredients, peel and cut the eggplant. So I had one fairly large. I know I said I was looking for the little guys. ⁓ But at the store, those ones looked kind of wrinkly and funny and they didn't look fresh, whereas the bigger ones look nice and plump and

Erin W (12:33)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

⁓ okay.

Heather (12:53)
firm and so that's what I chose. Just you know I don't think it makes a difference. Okay peel and cut. Make sure you this up this is going to be a lot of me reading it because you know it's like that's what Julie is all about. Okay make sure you cut eggplant into lengthwise slices that are about one inch wide three inch long and three eighth of an inch thick. Okay so we're we're gonna peel this thing which

Erin W (12:55)
Perfect.

You bet.

Heather (13:20)
Listen, if you've peeled an eggplant, it's kind of difficult actually.

Erin W (13:24)
I was gonna say,

that doesn't seem like a vegetable conducive to being peeled easily.

Heather (13:31)
don't use a peeler that's what I'll tell you. I like cut the ends just so could stand it up on a flat edge and I used a sharp knife and did my best to like trim all the peel off the outside of it. Okay so you know you're gonna get your little strips basically and then you're gonna cut the squash or zucchini the same size as the eggplant.

Erin W (13:32)
Don't use a peeler, okay?

Heather (13:57)
These are all going to be basically the same size and shape.

Erin W (14:00)
I'm imagining like a spear, like when you would cut up a cucumber to make like spears for dip. I'm imagining that size. Am I getting that right?

Heather (14:07)
Yeah, it's kind of like that. Yeah.

Like a little strip, like kind of like just a little stick. I don't know. Yeah. ⁓ okay. So you're going to cut the squash the same. Then you're going to put all those vegetables into a bowl and toss with a teaspoon of salt and set them aside for 30 minutes. Now, as most of us know, you often do this with eggplant to sweat it and get some of the

Erin W (14:12)
Okay. Yeah, okay.

Heather (14:33)
liquid out. And I just did a quick little out of curiosity. I'm like why do we salt vegetables before cooking them? So for anyone else who is curious here's a quick little summary of why you would salt your veggies 30 minutes before you want to cook them. So salt draws the water out of the plant cells which reduces the moisture and helps them stay crisper and hold their shape.

Erin W (14:34)
Mm-hmm.

Heather (15:00)
and not get mushy into your recipe. That's especially important for things like stir fries when you want to keep it crisp or casserole or something where it's going to bake for a while and you don't want it just to turn to mush.

Erin W (15:07)
Mm-hmm.

or Ratatouille?

Heather (15:13)
Ratatouille, apparently. And the salt softens the cell walls slightly, and that's what helps them keep their shape when heat or bacteria is applied. So you do the same thing before you would ferment these types of vegetables. Apparently. So there you go. We learned a trick for water-heavy vegetables.

not just for ratatouille, not just for you know do it whenever you cook these veggies and it might help maintain your structure of your dish. Okay.

Erin W (15:44)
Can I ask a question? When you salt these vegetables...

Heather (15:46)
Sure.

Erin W (15:49)
How do you remove... so they've sat in the salt. You usually don't want all that salt to go into the dish you're cooking or the moisture that's come out of them. What do you do with them?

Heather (15:59)
Well, let me tell you Julia's instructions and then we will dissect. Okay. It says set them aside for 30 minutes. Then it just says drain every slice and dry with a towel. was like drain every slice. What does that mean? So I just took it in like a small handful. I put it on paper towel and I use more paper towel and I blotted every one as best I can to get the

Erin W (16:02)
Okay.

Heather (16:28)
moisture off that has come out of them. It doesn't say anything about salt, whether it's going to still taste salty or not. I didn't feel like this dish was overly salty at the end, so maybe that was enough. It didn't say to rinse, so I didn't rinse.

Erin W (16:40)
No, I would agree.

Yeah, exactly. That's where I was wondering, like, are you rinsing? But then that's introducing more liquid, which seems like not the right thing to do. Also, a lot of paper towel? Perhaps?

Heather (16:56)
I mean, you could use a dish towel, I'm sure.

I didn't think it was a ton of paper towel. It's not like it's swimming in water after it's sweated. Like, honestly, they were wet. There's beaded water on it. But to say drain the slices? Wow, there's not that much water in the bowl.

Erin W (17:05)
Okay.

Okay.

Maybe our vegetables just aren't juicy enough. Maybe she was working with better French veggies than we get here.

Heather (17:19)
Maybe.

⁓

Yeah. Okay. Now take your skillet. I used my large cast iron skillet on my stove top. Four tablespoons of olive oil into it and then saute the squash and the eggplant one layer at a time for about a minute until they're lightly browned. Remove them into a dish. So are you doing, you know, one layer at a time.

Erin W (17:47)
Yep.

Heather (17:48)
And literally, like you had advised me, I put it on medium high heat, quite high heat, did it real quick, moved them through and ⁓ crossed my fingers like that. the salting and the quick saute, hopefully that's good. All right, then we're going to cook the peppers and onions in the same skillet. we've got, according to the...

Erin W (18:13)
Mm.

Heather (18:14)
Ingredients we have two peppers sliced. It doesn't say what size of slices so I guess figure it out. Just do what you, I don't know, do it how you like and then it says here about one and a half cups of thinly sliced yellow onion. So I use two small

Erin W (18:27)
Just figure it out. Slice up some peppers.

Heather (18:40)
yellow onions and I used two peppers. The ingredients list green pepper but I don't like green pepper. Personally I find it gives me heartburn so I don't eat it and I used I can't remember what I used red and orange or just orange or yellow one of those. Yeah sorry.

Erin W (18:48)
Mm.

It was something in that category of colour, red, orange or yellow, yep, but

not green. And ⁓ I also really liked that because yeah, green is not my favourite. Yeah.

Heather (19:10)
No, it doesn't, it's not sweet enough. It hasn't, I think, ripened enough in my opinion. Doesn't make me feel good. Yeah, so I don't need it. Okay, good. I'm glad you agree. ⁓ Okay, so we're going to cook those for about 10 minutes until they are tender. So, you know, onions, peppers, watch until they've softened, I guess.

Erin W (19:15)
I know. Yeah.

with you!

Heather (19:36)
Then we're going to add in some garlic. have here two cloves of mashed garlic. And season the mixture with salt and pepper. So salt and pepper to taste, I guess. I went light on the salt because I was thinking like you about the veggies. I was like, how much salt is already in this dish? So I gave it some pepper and moved along. Now we have tomatoes.

Erin W (19:59)
Mm-hmm.

Heather (20:04)
⁓ a pound of red tomatoes and it says in parentheses make sure they are ripe firm seeded peeled and juiced with an exclamation mark i was like

Erin W (20:19)
Whoa, how

many things am I doing to these tomatoes?

Heather (20:22)
And how do I do this? I don't know. Okay, I can, yes, they're firm. Yes, they're ripe. I can seed them. I can even manage to get the peels off with a little sharp little paring knife, which is also kind of a pain. like, why do we need to peel them? But okay. But juiced? Juiced? Well, I didn't want to cook them if they weren't meant to be cooked. So I didn't want to, I didn't know if blanching was okay or what. Here I'm trying to follow Julia's instructions.

Erin W (20:38)
Can't you just blanch him?

Yeah.

Heather (20:49)
Okay, juiced. So basically I got the peel off with my little knife and then I cut them in half and I scooped out the seedy membrane middle part and tried to make sure there wasn't any like juice sitting in the middle.

Erin W (21:05)
Okay, yeah, that sounds good to me. This

Heather (21:06)
That sounds about right. Okay.

so we're gonna slice the what's left of the tomatoes, the pulp, in we're gonna slice them into 3 eighths inch strips.

Erin W (21:13)
Whatever you've got left in there.

Wow, she really

doesn't like the quarter or the half inch. She's going right in the middle. 3 eighths, baby.

Heather (21:25)
She's really precise.

I had a ruler and I was like, why, why Julia? Like, can I just slice? In the end, I think I, I guess tomatoed as they say. Okay. Now, layer those tomatoes over the peppers and onions. Season again with salt and pepper.

Erin W (21:37)
like that.

Heather (21:44)
I don't know, I just say be careful with how much you're putting in there. Cover the skillet and let the vegetables cook for about five minutes on low heat until the tomatoes start letting out some juice. Okay. Then it says raise the heat, boil the vegetables in the tomato juice until the juice evaporates. So you're gonna cook them on low until they get juicy, then you're gonna boil it until the juice is gone.

Erin W (21:48)
Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Heather (22:11)
Okay, now, yeah, apparently you've used them.

Erin W (22:12)
you've already juiced your tomatoes right? Correct? Okay.

I mean I didn't want to bring that up but then I had to.

Heather (22:19)
No,

I'm glad you did because at the time I was like really watching. I'm like, okay, is there going to be any juice? Because I've tried to make sure there was like not much juice in here. ⁓ Julia, you drive me nuts. Okay. Then it says to, we're going to move everything into a casserole dish, but you're still finishing it on the cooktop. So I was like, well, that seems silly to dirty another dish. So I just did it right in my skillet. I just.

Erin W (22:43)
⁓ yeah.

Executive decision well made.

Heather (22:50)
Yeah, so you're

going to start out with about a third of the tomato mixture. So I took out two thirds roughly of what was in there into a separate dish, spread my tomatoes and peppers and onions on the bottom. Then we're going to sprinkle some minced parsley over it, add eggplant and squash over that, ⁓ about half of it. Then tomatoes and onions.

Erin W (22:59)
Okay.

Mmm, okay.

Okay, gotcha.

Heather (23:17)
Then squash

an eggplant and then you're supposed to finish off with the rest of the tomatoes and onions. I didn't have much left at this point. I was kind of like, I didn't really measure that out very well, but I think it's okay. And then you're going to top it off with a bit more parsley, cover it and on low heat, let it simmer for about 10 minutes. after 10 minutes,

Erin W (23:28)
Good night.

Okay.

Heather (23:40)
You're going to raise the heat a little bit and cook everything for 15 minutes uncovered.

Erin W (23:45)
right.

Heather (23:46)
until all the juices have evaporated. At this point there's not much juice to evaporate but okay. And try not to burn the bottom of it because really it's not very juicy. So kind of I was like checking a little bit with my spatula and like ⁓ and that's it. Take it out and serve.

Erin W (24:00)
Yes.

Yeah, I can see that.

Heather (24:07)
So really simple. ⁓ It's not much in there. There's vegetables, salt and pepper, garlic, and parsley. Really not much going on.

Erin W (24:18)
Great flavor

though. Like everything tasted so good it wasn't over salted.

Heather (24:24)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, you know what? I liked it.

Erin W (24:27)
I did too. I don't know if I would have it as a main dish. I think it would just be a side.

Heather (24:35)
we in my house we ate it as a side with salmon.

Erin W (24:38)
that's a great idea. I was gonna say some sort of grilled meat is what I'm thinking. Okay.

Heather (24:41)
Mm-hmm. Yeah,

we actually did the baked salmon from the diabetes cookbook. You know, the capers and mustard and lemon juice. Yeah, very tasty. And I think ratatouille as a veggie side could go with kind of any protein. Yeah. Yeah.

Erin W (24:47)
⁓ yeah.

Yes. yeah.

anything. Yeah. Yeah.

No, I thought it was really tasty.

I am a big fan of zucchini. I also really loved the eggplant in this. I thought it was delicious. It went well with everything. Whatever I did the first time I made ratatouille many, many years ago was wrong. So I thought this was fantastic. And yeah, I...

Heather (25:05)
Thank you.

Erin W (25:22)
It's this thing with being intentional with everything that you cook individually. That is what I'm learning with the French cooking is like everything might live together at the end, but boy, are they handled separately and individually along the way.

Heather (25:30)
Mm-hmm. I think that is the trick here.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and it might feel like I can see why people adapted it and to make it into let's just cut everything the same shape, put it in a pan and bake it in the oven and then voila, like that's how I had made it before too. And it was fine, but it wasn't really good. And nobody really liked the eggplant or like picking the eggplant out because it didn't probably cook properly. Like, and tomatoes, we all know tomatoes can be fussy. You don't cook the tomato the same amount of times you cook an eggplant or a zucchini. Like it's just.

Erin W (25:53)
Yeah, absolutely.

Heather (26:10)
a different thing altogether. And so I think that is the key is to cook it. Even though when you read it out, it's like, well, this seems like a pain in the ass. There's a reason. There's a reason for this. Yeah.

Erin W (26:23)
Yeah, no, and I think I love that you went and did that with this dish because especially with vegetables that all finish differently and cook differently and have different needs to get their best flavors, this does that all but then fools you into thinking it's easy by having it in one little dish that it's all like perfectly made together.

So yeah, I would agree that it's all about keeping them separate. And in fact, I was making, I just made like a very simple chicken braised chicken dish and I was gonna put the vegetables in with my chicken and I was gonna make potatoes with it too. And I was like, you know what? My potatoes are gonna need something different.

and had carrots and radishes and the chicken together and I made two cast iron pans and put them in the oven and cooked them separately. Cause I was like, you know what, these need different things. And after our talk about the Ratatouille, I was like, you know what, I think I'm going to apply that here. And it worked out fantastically. And I was like, this wouldn't have been as good if I hadn't have had those two dishes doing their own thing.

Heather (27:26)
Mm-hmm. And I think this is why we often get excited about like a sheet pan dinner or one pan, one pot dinner, because it seems, ⁓ so simple, fewer dishes, everything cooks together. And then in the end, you're not really all that excited about it. It's like, well, it's fine. But they don't, some of those things shouldn't have been cooked in there with it. You know? Yeah, you totally make sense. And I actually, I'm kind of on board now with the salting the things.

Erin W (27:46)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Heather (27:52)
30 minutes ahead, even though, you know, that kind of, hard for me because I'm usually winging it and running late against the clock. But I see the value in it. And it wasn't overly crazy salty like I was worried it was going to be. So I think, I think that was a good tip.

Erin W (28:09)
And it definitely,

and it held up. Like there were full pieces of zucchini, even after I heated it up, that I was like, mm, this is like perfectly cooked, right? Like it wasn't like, ⁓ this may have been a zucchini. You know, sometimes when you bake them and they get mixed in with everything. Yeah, I thought that was really good. Yeah.

Heather (28:26)
Yeah, they get too soft. And

I think it was worth peeling that eggplant too. Because sometimes the peel on the eggplant is a bit, that's the part you got to kind of bite through and I don't really enjoy it. Whereas without the peel, yeah, yeah, without the peel, it just seemed like just more, it's nicer to eat. I don't know, texture-wise. Yes, what was that from?

Erin W (28:34)
true.

Yeah, it almost gets leathery, right?

It was more agreeable.

I think

we talked about fiddleheads being very agreeable.

Heather (28:57)
She's

so agreeable. Anyway, sometimes even though Julia's recipes look intimidating and like a lot of weird steps and they don't always make sense because it's written in a way that is not, not maybe the way we ourselves would try to tell someone how to cook something. When, if you go through it and honestly do the step by step, like she writes it, usually in the end you can, you can figure it out and you can get a dish out of it. I mean,

Erin W (29:22)
Mm-hmm.

Heather (29:23)
I haven't tried a ton of her stuff, but for the ones I have made, I think it's good.

Erin W (29:27)
Yeah,

all that fussy French stuff is for a reason. It just depends on whether that's important to you or not.

Heather (29:33)
Mm-hmm.

It's worth trying. I think I'll say that. Yeah.

Erin W (29:38)
Yes. Yeah.

No, I like this. I'm gonna, I'd like to make this for sure as a side.

Heather (29:45)
Yeah, and if you would like to make it too, go to threekitchenspodcast.com and go to the recipe page and there it will be for you.

Erin W (29:55)
That was beautiful.

Heather (30:23)
recording is better quality. I'm like, well, good, because I look a little fuzzy. That's a good thing.