Ratatouille with Creamy Polenta
This Ratatouille recipe is a loose interpretation of the classic dish. Use the veggies you have on hand and see what you come up with.
My apologies to ratatouille purists. Ratatouille is traditionally made with eggplant, zucchini, bell peppers, and tomatoes. I was out of zucchini, and I wasn’t interested in peppers.
However, I did have two beautiful eggplants. I considered making eggplant Parmesan, but decided the steps involved were too fussy. Salting and pressing the eggplant to remove excess moisture sounds like work. I settled on steam sautéing. All you have to do is chop and stir – which led me to freestyle this Ratatouille recipe.
Ratatouille with Creamy Polenta
My Creamy Polenta with Zucchini recipe inspired this rendition. They share similar ingredients. I suppose you could combine the zucchini and eggplant, throw in some bell peppers, and serve a more traditional ratatouille.
The lesson here is there are no hard and fast rules. Work with the veggies you have on hand and see what you come up with. Just be sure to include some kind of legume to boost the protein.
You could also serve the Ratatouille over pasta, quinoa, or rice. But the creamy polenta combo is extra satisfying!
How to Make Polenta in a Rice Cooker
Instead of being a slave to the stove, you can “fix it and forget it” in a rice cooker with just three simple steps:
- Add water to rice cooker
- Stir in polenta (and any seasoning)
- Cook on the white rice setting
It’s that easy! The recipe also calls for vegan “parmesan”—or what my family calls “shaker cheese”. Here are a couple of ways to make it.
Vegan “Parmesan Cheese”
I often use a recipe I found on Minimalist Baker. It’s super easy. You just blend the following ingredients until they become fine crumbs:
- ¾ cup raw cashews
- 3 tbsp nutritional yeast
- ¼ tsp garlic powder
- ¾ tsp Himalayan cooking salt
This option works best for this recipe. However, some people need to avoid nutritional yeast. If you are one of them, try this next option.
Vegan “Parmesan Cheese” – without Nutritional Yeast
Blend the following:
- ½ cup Brazil nuts or cashews
- ½ teaspoon Himalayan cooking salt
- ½ teaspoon dried basil
- 2 cloves of garlic
The fresh raw garlic option provides an extra kick! Feel free to adjust the measurements in either recipe to find the ratio you like best.
Ratatouille with Creamy Polenta
Ingredients
Polenta
Ratatouille
- 14.5 oz canned tomatoes with green chilies
- 15.5 oz canned kidney beans low sodium, rinsed and drained
- 2 medium eggplants chopped with skin on (about 6-7 cups)
- 1 Portobello mushroom large, chopped (about 1 cup)
- ½ onion large, coarsely chopped (about 1 1/2 cups)
- 2 cups braising greens chopped (kale, collard greens and/or chard)
- ¼ tsp. garlic granules or garlic powder
- 2 tsp. dried oregano
- 1 tsp. dried basil
- 1 tsp. dried marjoram
- fine sea salt and ground black pepper to taste
Instructions
Polenta
- Add 4 cups of water to rice cooker.
- Add cornmeal and crushed garlic and stir lightly.
- Close rice cooker and cook polenta on white rice setting. (It will take about 20-30 minutes.)
- When rice cooker beeps, carefully open the lid and stir the polenta. It should be thick and creamy.
- Slowly pour in plant milk while stirring.
- Add vegan Parmesan cheese and dried parsley and stir to mix thoroughly.
- Cover and keep warm if Ratatouille is not done.
Ratatouille
- While the polenta is cooking, add diced tomatoes, eggplant, Portobello mushroom, onion, garlic granules, dried oregano, basil and marjoram to a 5-quart sauté pan, cover and cook on medium high for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. (Reduce to medium heat after about 5 minutes.)
- Add braising greens and cook for another 5 minutes.
- Add kidney beans and continue cooking until veggies reach desired tenderness.
- Keep warm if polenta is not done.
To Serve
- Place 3-4 ladlesful of polenta into 4 pasta bowls.
- Use a large slotted spoon to top each serving with 3-4 spoonsful of Ratatouille.
- Sprinkle with vegan Parmesan cheese and sea salt and ground black pepper to taste.
Ratatouille has a close cousin called Bohémienne Provençal or something close to it after the Romany that brought North Indian food with them to the South of France. Its kind of free form but is eggplant, tomato, onion at its base, usually peppers, maybe some fennel, leek, shallot.
I would strongly suggest you add some passata, crushed tomatoes, etc. so there is some extra sauce to permeate the polenta.
While on the topic of southern French cooking you can try a soupe au pistou, it is generally vegan, pistou is close but not the same as pesto, it shouldn’t have any cheese in it, and its basically just a bean and vegetable soup served hot or cold and you dollop the pistou in the center which gives the soup very nice fresh basil and garlic punch.
My favorite accidentally vegan Mediterranean food is without a doubt socca/farinata, its a flat bread that is super easy to put together, its made of chickpea flour.
If you have tried to cook polenta in a pot and made a mess let me help you, put the corn meal in the cold pot and add the liquid bit by bit while stirring once all the lumps are out turn on the heat, it will keep it from being a clumpy mess. It also comes together quickly if you just want a bowl of porridge instead of the gelatinized stuff. To get the gelatinized stuff you need to stir it constantly, and most northern Italians have a gadget that is made just to stir polenta.