Ratatouille! UPDATED!

Saw Pixar's movie, Ratatouille, recently. Liked it, didn't love it. The main rat, Remy, was cute and completely anthropomorphic, but things got a little too realistic for my tastes when it got to his extended family. The best scene, for me, however, was when the food critic had a flashback to his French country childhood. This depiction of a transformational experience, locked in his memory bank, really almost moved me to tears. But then again, most things do :) Reminded me of the first time I had ratatouille. I had taken Amtrak from New York City to Montreal to meet a friend. We stayed with a French Canadian couple named Marc and Sylvie who had an apartment full of cats and song. Marc made ratatouille for dinner and strummed his guitar while it simmered, singing in his charming accent:

You've got to give a little, take a little,
and let your poor heart break a little.
That's the story of, that's the glory of love.

So ratatouille makes me think of love and laughter and song and cats, and now rats. And I've been chewing over a couple things all week. One, how brave it was for Pixar to name this movie after a dish most Americans have never heard of or tried and most cannot pronounce or certainly spell. As an ex-Turner Broadcasting sales promotion manager, I've sat in those meetings with movie studio marketing folks and I know how every little detail can get debated to death. How amazing that Ratatouille survived as the name.

Yet.

My daughter and I talked several times after the movie about the ratatouille dish served in the story. It is unlike any version I have ever seen or eaten. An elegant stack of small, round slices of eggplant and yellow squash in a tomato coulis. Served more like an appetizer. It was shown several times in the movie and looked beautiful and inviting each time. My daughter and I both wanted to try this version.

So we went to the Ratatouille website, expecting at least to find a still photo of the dish and hoping, perhaps, to find an actual recipe of their version. Non. The studio that was brave enough to name a movie Ratatouille included neither photo nor recipe of the star dish.

So we made it up. Using all local ingredients (for once!), we stacked round slices of Bill Yoder's yellow squash and Dave's Japanese eggplant with Jeremy and Jessica's goat cheese in the middle of each layer and baked it for about thirty minutes. We cooked down Melissa's heirloom tomatoes and threw in a handful of chopped basil from the garden to make the coulis, and we tried our best to recreate the look and feel of the dish from the movie.

Did we succeed? Well, to a point. There were no rats in the kitchen.

And now, because there is a very strong chance that you can't get that song out of your head, here are the rest of the lyrics. Sing away while simmering!

You've got to give a little, take a little,
and let your poor heart break a little.
That's the story of, that's the glory of love.

You've got to laugh a little, cry a little,
until the clouds roll by a little.
That's the story of, that's the glory of love.

As long as there's the two of us,
we've got the world and all it's charms.
And when the world is through with us,
we've got each other's arms.

You've got to win a little, lose a little,
yes, and always have the blues a little.
That's the story of, that's the glory of love.
That's the story of, that's the glory of love.

P.S. Pixar Marketing Director! Please send me a photo of that ratatouille dish and I'll post it! Thanks!

UPDATE: July 24, 2007

Thanks to Matt--here is the link to the actual recipe used for the star dish in Ratatouille. It was created by Thomas Keller of The French Laundry.

Ratatouille! UPDATED!