Ratatouille You Might Not Recognize - Iterations 1 and 1.5

Eggplant, zucchini, red bell pepper, onion, tomato, & parsley, all ingredients in a traditional ratatouille. I pureed the bell pepper in my trusty Vita-mix, strained and added 1%, by weight, sodium alginate. Then the puree gets spread out and misted with a 5% calcium lactate solution. Next I juiced some onions, then mixed the juice with agave nectar. This was necessary since onion juice has a bit of a bite, and not the sweetness onion takes on when cooked. This mixture is brought to a boil and tapioca pearls are added. Pearl onions! Andrew from Top Chef deserves a nod for hipping me to tapioca pearls. The zucchini is cut into matchsticks and pickled in lemon juice and rice wine vinegar. I used the caviar from the tomato, since it is supposed to be high in umami. The parsley coulis is taken from The French Laundry Cookbook. The eggplant was marinated in balsamic vinegar in a FoodSaver Marinator. This thing is nice since the vacuum forces apart the tissue, or in this case the fiber, of whatever is being marinated, allowing deeper penetration of the marinade. Then I fried it.

Overall it was okay, but needs tweaking. The bell pepper had the texture of Ethiopian bread, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The pearl onions didn't cook all the way through, which is. The ingredients when combined on the fork just didn't do it for me.

Here we have mostly the same ingredients, but I didn't fry the eggplant, and I accidentally left off the pearl onions. This iteration definitely tasted better. So frying is not the way to go.

While preparing this dish, it occurred to me that there are few different techniques I would like to try out, such as dehydrating the bell pepper, and roasting the onions before juicing. So you will be seeing this dish again.

On a philosophical note, how much can you deconstruct and reconstruct a dish and still have it be the same dish?