Ratatouille
Photo: Marcus Guimarães · CC BY 2.0

Ratatouille is the Provençal stew of summer vegetables, aubergine, courgette, peppers, tomato and onion cooked slowly in olive oil, one of the dishes Avignon households still cook; in France we have verified places to eat it in Avignon and Nice.

Ratatouille · Avignon

Ratatouille is the Provençal stew of summer vegetables, aubergine, courgette, peppers, tomato and onion cooked slowly in olive oil, one of the dishes Avignon households still cook.

The word comes from the Occitan ratatolha and the French touiller, to stir, and in the early 19th century it meant any coarse mixed stew. Tomatoes, peppers and squash reached France from the Americas but only became everyday food in the 18th and 19th centuries, and no recipe recognisable as modern ratatouille appears in print before the late 19th or early 20th century. It is most tied to Nice.

Where to eat Ratatouille in Avignon: the editor picks

Ratatouille · Nice

Ratatouille is the Nicois stewed summer vegetables dish, aubergine, courgette, tomato, red pepper, onion and garlic cooked separately and combined in olive oil with basil and thyme.

Ratatouille comes from the Nicois rata, a stew, and originated as a Provencal summer market dish that uses the canonical six vegetables. The Cuisine Nissarde label specifies separate cooking of each vegetable before combining, so each retains texture rather than collapsing into a mush. The dish appears across the canonical Cuisine Nissarde rooms in Vieux Nice.

Where to eat in Nice:

Where to eat Ratatouille in Nice: the editor picks

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