Recipes Breakfast + Brunch Savory Brunch Ratatouille Toasts with Fried Eggs 5.0 (3,387) 2 Reviews This is an ideal make-ahead brunch recipe; the luscious ratatouille tastes even better when made the day before. Slideshow: More Brunch Recipes By Zoe Nathan Zoe Nathan F&W Star Chef » See All F&W Chef Superstars Restaurants: Rustic Canyon, Huckleberry Café & Bakery, Sweet Rose Creamery, Milo and Olive (Los Angeles) Education: Institute of Culinary Education (New York City) Chef Zoe Nathan is known for the baked goods and pastries she creates for the compact restaurant empire she owns with her husband, Josh Loeb. But the Santa Monica native actually got her start in the savory kitchen: While attending the Institute of Culinary Education in New York she worked the butcher station at Lupa. Back in her native California, she netted crucial experience at Jardinière and Tartine Bakery in San Francisco. “The atmosphere at Tartine was so inspirational,” Nathan remembers. “I learned all the basic core principles of baking there.” Nathan’s and Loeb’s mothers—book club buddies—arranged their fateful meet-cute at Loeb’s Rustic Canyon restaurant. Nathan became the restaurant’s pastry chef and soon the two were dating. In 2009 the pair opened Huckleberry Café & Bakery nearby, followed by their ice cream shop, Sweet Rose Creamery, and wood-fired kitchen, Milo and Olive, in 2011. As she put the finishing touches on her first cookbook, based on the breakfast foods of Huckleberry, Nathan sat down with Food & Wine to talk wedding cakes, Jewish delis and her taste for “crunchy fat.” What dish are you most famous for?During the summer people go crazy for our blueberry-corn cornmeal cake and they’re very, very sad when it’s gone. It’s slightly sweetened, full of ricotta and yogurt, and it has a touch of salt that you can actually taste. It’s really soft and it has tons of fresh corn in it. Before we bake it, we top it with a thick layer of fresh blueberries and sugar. What two dishes really tell us your story as a chef?I feel like I’m a lot more than just a baker and a pastry chef, so the brisket hash at Huckleberry comes to mind. We braise brisket overnight and then we chop it up, toss it with fresh, roasted potatoes and top it with eggs and a big handful of arugula. It’s something that I grew up eating, and to me, it’s just comfort food at its best. It’s also a very abundant dish and I love the idea of waking people up in the morning with pure abundance. The other one is our maple bacon biscuits. Growing up, I knew that the only way to eat bacon was to dip it in maple syrup. For this dish we make a very traditional biscuit filled with tons of chopped bacon and syrup and topped with fleur de sel. It has that salty-sweet thing going on that I try to put into all of my pastries. Who are your food mentors? What is the most important thing you learned from them? I would say Chad Robertson and Elisabeth Prueitt at Tartine were my food mentors. They taught me that color can be a flavor and that salt is the most important thing in a recipe. What was the first dish you ever cooked yourself? I cooked Sloppy Joes for my older brother, with fresh alphabet soup. I was really excited because I found the dried alphabets and I made the soup from scratch, not from a can. What is the best dish for a neophyte cook to try? Just go to the farmers’ market and find the thing that looks the prettiest to you. If it’s a green, just sauté it with garlic, salt and chile flakes. If you see amazing apples, just sauté them and eat them with yogurt. It doesn’t have to be complicated, it doesn’t have to contain a huge amount of ingredients. Just find something beautiful, cook it quickly and eat it. Is there a culinary skill or type of dish that you wish you were better at? I wish I was better with chocolate. I think it’s an art form, and I don’t know if I have the patience for it. I also want to learn how to make the best wedding cakes in the world! I would love to make somebody’s wedding the best day of their life and the best meal of their life, and have their dessert be the best piece of cake they’ve ever had. Name one indispensable store-bought ingredient. Almonds are just the perfect crunchy fat. So many baked goods are much improved with some crushed toasted almonds on top. Yogurt’s better with almonds; pancakes are better with almond meal. I make almond butter and almond milk at home—that’s all we drink. You’re planning a budget-friendly food trip—where would you go and why? Portland, Oregon, is hands down the best food scene in America right now. They use the best ingredients. They’re so unpretentious. The kitchens are all open and so amazing, and it’s not crazy-expensive to go there. I just think Portland is where it’s at. I would move there in a minute if I wasn’t so tethered to Los Angeles. If you could invest in a dream project, what would it be? I would probably build the best Jewish deli in the world. I know my grandparents would be incredibly proud. We’d do the best pastrami and corned beef, the best rugelach, bagels and bagel chips, blintzes, stuffed cabbage and matzo ball soup. All the things I grew up eating. What is your current food obsession? It’s probably toasted sesame seeds, I put that on everything. It’s just delicious—a little toasty, extra bit of fat. Sometimes I’ll get white sesame seeds, and I’ll toast them and crush them in the mortar and pestle with a little bit of fleur de sel. I’ll use that to top things like roasted vegetables and rice. Who are some of your favorite people to follow on Instagram? I’m really into Instagram, I’m kind of obsessed. I like this girl Floriole who I used to work with at Tartine. She’s doing the same thing I’m doing, but in Chicago. She just has a bakery, she’s got a six-year-old, she just works hard and she’s always recipe testing. I also like Katherinebont, she’s really cool. She works at Noma and takes the raddest pictures in the kitchen there. Also there’s chefjeremyfox, my new chef at Rustic Canyon, he takes really cool pictures. Food & Wine's Editorial Guidelines Updated on February 7, 2019 Print Rate It Share Share Tweet Pin Email Photo: © Con Poulos Active Time: 1 hrs Total Time: 1 hrs 20 mins Yield: 6 Ingredients 3/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling 3 medium tomatoes, seeded and cut into 1/2-inch dice 5 garlic cloves 1 1/4 teaspoons crushed red pepper Kosher salt One 12-ounce eggplant, seeds cut out and flesh cut into 1/2-inch dice (2 cups) 2 small zucchini, cut into 1/2-inch dice (2 cups) 2 large red onions, cut into 1/2-inch dice 1 red bell pepper, cut into 1/2-inch dice 1 bay leaf 1 cup chopped basil, plus more for garnish Freshly ground black pepper 6 large eggs Six 1/2-inch-thick slices of sourdough bread, toasted Directions In a large skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil. Add the tomatoes, 1 garlic clove and 1/4 teaspoon of the crushed red pepper and season with salt. Cook the tomatoes over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until just softened, about 5 minutes. Scrape the tomatoes into a medium saucepan and discard the garlic clove. Wipe out the skillet. Repeat with the eggplant, zucchini, onions and red bell pepper, cooking each vegetable separately in 2 tablespoons of oil with 1 garlic clove, 1/4 teaspoon of crushed red pepper and a generous pinch of salt until just tender and lightly browned, about 7 minutes per vegetable. Add the cooked vegetables to the tomatoes in the saucepan. Add the bay leaf, 1/2 cup of the basil and 1/3 cup of water to the saucepan with the vegetables. Cover and cook over moderately low heat, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are very tender, about 20 minutes. Discard the bay leaf and stir in the remaining 1/2 cup of basil. Season the ratatouille with salt and pepper and let cool slightly. Meanwhile, in a large nonstick skillet, heat the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil over moderate heat. Crack 3 of the eggs into the skillet and fry until the whites are firm and the yolks are runny, 3 to 5 minutes. Transfer the eggs to a plate, season with salt and pepper and keep warm. Repeat with the remaining 3 eggs. To serve, spoon the ratatouille onto the toasts and top with the eggs. Drizzle with olive oil and chopped basil and serve. Make Ahead The ratatouille can be refrigerated for up to 3 days. Serve warm or at room temperature. Rate it Print