Ratatouille tian: The aesthete’s answer to roast vegetables

Like a traditional ratatouille, this variation comes from Provence.

Your kids might recognize this dish, even if they don’t know its name, said Clotilde Dusoulier in The French Market Cookbook (Clarkson Potter.) In the 2007 animated film Ratatouille, Chef Linguini finally wins over a haughty food critic with an assemblage that turns sliced garden vegetables into a minor work of art. Like a traditional ratatouille, this variation comes from Provence. But the vegetables, instead of being cooked on a stove, are arranged in an earthenware pan called a tian; oven roasting “coaxes them into caramelization.”

Keep in mind when you’re shopping that the dish looks best if each of the vegetables is about the same diameter. A tian tastes even better the day after it’s cooked, served either reheated or cold. You can lay the vegetables over a bowl of long-grain rice or slip them into a focaccia sandwich with fresh basil and pine nuts.

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