Ratatouille

When I was a kid, my mother made a version of ratatouille with chicken.

I hated it. 
My dad used to refer to it as "chicken rat's tail." 
That didn't help.

The flavors were muddy, the chicken was rubbery, and, inevitably, there would be an alcoholic residue in the stew (I'm going to assume her recipe called for white wine ... and Mom doesn't really drink) and I just plain could NOT get past the way everything stewed together.

So, when my 5-year-old saw "Remy's Ratatouille With Poached Eggs" on Disney Junior and insisted we were going to cook it "for Daddy," I have to admit I had a kind of Proustian moment thinking about that childhood experience and comparing it to the dish we saw on screen. 

Seeing as how it's Friday, and I'm on a no-meat-on-Friday kick, I figured it wouldn't hurt to try the recipe.

Please note, this isn't a version of the one from the animated film, Ratatouille, which uses mandoline-sliced vegetables in kind of a gratin method, but rather a variation on the actual peasant-stew.

In other words, it's closer to my mom's than Pixar's.

And ... 


... I like this one fine.