This week’s challenge of “Famous Dishes” involved a full exploration of the term “famous.” To ensure true fulfillment of such a broad idea, I decided to take on the well-known French dish made famous by a Disney mouse: ratatouille.

Eggplant, squash and peppers provided all the colors and textures needed for the dish.s

On a super thin setting, rhe mandoline made fast work of the slicing.

Designing each layer so that each slice peeked out from behind the next took a small amount of patience.

Using a hearty tomato sauce as the base, this ratatouille had all the elements found in the classic dish.

As a pizza, all this baby was missing was cheese,

Where there was once no mozzarella, suddenly mozzarella.

After a bit of doctoring, the mozzarella slices snuggled up quite nicely in their new bed of vegetables.

Cooking was a tad risky considering the dense sheets of water-laden vegetables and abundance of sauce on such a thin crust.

The pizza still came out looking like a beast.

Fresh thyme and cracked black pepper supplied a kick of herbacous, savory notes.

No dish has wanted more for a rustic French red than this one, an instinct I didn’t trust until the first sip.

The pairing was outstanding. This Syrah-based red out of Languedoc had a funky fresh personality that was quite a sipper on its own. And despite a somewhat soggy crust and slightly undercooked vegetables, the ratatouille pizza was a treat by itself but it really hit a new height with the wine. The entire experience has been bookmarked for revisiting in the future.