I had never made or even eaten ratatouille until Elwood gave me a copy of Nigella Lawson's How To Eat for Christmas in 1998. I found it tasty but also slow-- all that chopping, all that stirring. Today I was doing a quick fridge inventory and I pulled out two baby zucchini and a toddler-sized eggplant. "You know," I said to myself, "I bet the internet will tell you how to make this in the Instant Pot."
AND LO: ratatouille is much easier than it used to be.
I cranked up the Instant Pot in saute mode and poured in a generous glug of olive oil. I put the thin slicer blade in my food processor, and an onion yielded up a pile of translucent half-moon slices. I chucked them into the hot oil, sprinkled them with salt, and turned the eggplant into effortless half-moons. I chucked the eggplant into the hot oil and sliced the zucchini. The zucchini sailed into the pot along with a chopped yellow pepper, a can of petite diced tomatoes, 4 chopped cloves of garlic, and a half-teaspoon of ground coriander. I gave them 8 minutes under high pressure. Once the pressure came down I added a handful of chopped basil, a squeeze of lemon, and salt.
Would a Provençal grandmère approve? Je ne sais pas. But my family approved, which is what counts. If you are looking for a fairly painless way to use up some August bounty, I can recommend this approach. It made a slightly soupier ratatouille than the stovetop versions, so we served it over rice, with sausages. (I have a horror of scorching the contents of my Instant Pot, so I did not drain my tomatoes.)
I also made a cucumber salad with spicy tahini dressing. Once I had the ratatouille underway, I gave the food processor a quick rinse and then turned a handful of small CSA cucumbers into thin-sliced rounds. For the dressing I stirred together a quarter-cup of tahini, a tablespoonful of sambal oelek, a healthy shake of sesame seeds, a bit of lemon juice, a tiny sprinkle of fish sauce, a slightly larger sprinkle of salt, and enough water to make it pourable. It had a pleasant kick and an appealing creaminess. I am thinking happily about what I might do with the leftovers. Maybe they will dress a lunchtime rice bowl, with shredded carrots and cabbage and scrambled egg? I'll figure something out.
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