Ratatoille

Judging by the number of grad student food blogs out there, I am not the first to look at the pile of papers to read, grant applications and manuscripts to write, and important dissertation documents to work on and think, "You know, a Thomas Keller recipe is the perfect thing to make for dinner." His confit byaldi is the basis for the signature dish in the movie Ratatouille. And takes roughly four hours to make. Let's get started:

I tossed the eggplant, zucchini, yellow squash, and roma tomatoes through my food processor to get nice, thin, even slices.

Next up is the piperade, the base sauce for the dish. I omitted the parsley and used dried thyme leaves instead of the sprig of thyme as per the recipe, and then left it in instead of discarding it.

Then I spent an unreasonably long time arranging the vegetable slices in my 9"x13" pan, fanning them out just so and hiding the last bits of vegetable slices between the rows.

It took a long time, but this was pretty much the last week I'd be able to get these vegetables from the farmer's market and I'd been wanting to try this recipe for a long time. We served it with quinoa. It was amazing, and if you are a grad student (or anyone else) with time on your hands or the desire for intense procrastination, I highly recommend this dish!