Ratatouille can be superb, but is somewhat of an ungrateful performance. If not perfectly managed in the cooking, some vegetables will be cooked too much and become mushy. If and when you do succeed with a perfect ratatouille, you have a satisfying dish, but not an exciting one.

Therefore in our household, we have substituted the following colache, a rancho alternative to ratatouille. This supplies interesting flavors of red and green peppers, a bit of highly seasoned tomato, and corn.

This is an old family recipe from Jacqueline Higuera, who was raised on a Northern California rancho. Women in her family have been using this procedure, with their own individual variations, for 150 years.

The procedure is, if anything, more respectful of vegetable independence than in ratatouille. Peppers and tomatoes are not only cooked separately, but seasoned separately.

This may be prepared ahead, and refrigerates fairly well. May be served warm, at room temperature, or cold.

Adapted from Jacqueline Higuera McMahan, SF Chronicle, 8/6/97. She is the author of California Rancho Cooking.

Serves 6

De-stem peppers. Remove all seeds, as these would burn. Cut peppers into bite-sized pieces.

Heat olive oil in pan. Add chopped onions. Heat 1 minute, stirring, to coat onions. Stir in peppers and ham. Cover and simmer gently 15 minutes. Add tablespoons of water if necessary to keep vegetables from sticking to pan. 

Uncover and move peppers to side of pan (where they will steam slightly).

Dice tomato and add it to the open pan. Cook a couple of minutes until it softens, then mash with a fork or potato masher. Cook a couple of minutes longer to evaporate some of the juice. Stir in the vinegar, with the generous oregano and black pepper. Stir the tomato mixture into the peppers and onions.

(May be done ahead to this point.)

If vegetables have cooled, reheat for 5 minutes. Add miniature corn cobs. Cover and simmer 10 minutes, or until corn is heated through.

Variations

Instead of ham, the original has 1 cup of diced Italian frying pepper. McMahan sprinkled 1 tablespoon of fresh basil over the corn and added ¼ cup of grated Parmesan cheese just before serving.

If you do not have fresh corn, kernels of canned corn are not a bad substitute.

Jacqueline McMahan never makes this the same way twice. She encourages addition of "little things," as, fresh small green beans. I would not want to go very far afield here. Carrots, for example, would, at least to my mind, unacceptably alter the distinctive rancho character of the dish.