Roasted Eggplant and Tomato Pasta (Secret Recipe Club)

SRC time again, already! Having something to do every month really makes me realise how little I post on my blog. This month I was assigned to Ethan's blog, Food in My Hands. I spent the better part of the month trying to decide what to make, everything looks so good. First it was Maple Swirl Bread, then White Chocolate and Cranberry Cookies, then Veggie Meatballs with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce... in the end, though, I settled on roast eggplant and tomato pasta. Because I love me some pasta, and I was keen to try roast eggplant. I made this for dinner at the Friendzone, so instead of adding sausages (because Levi is a vegetarian and veggie sausages are expensive!) I substituted them for mushrooms, and I think it worked out delightfully. I also substituted fresh tomato for tinned diced tomato, thats just because I am lazy. Also tomatoes are expensive at the moment, who knew?

As always, the Secret Recipe Club website is looking delightful and you should head over there.

ROASTED EGGPLANT AND TOMATO PASTA
Serves 4
Time commitment: 40 minutes roasting, 20 minutes actual work
Recipe from Food In My Hands
Cost: $1.82 per serve. 


500g pasta (I used elbow pasta, but I'm sure anything would work)
1 large eggplant
6 mushrooms
400g can diced tomato
Olive oil

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Cube the eggplant and put it in a roasting dish with a generous amount of olive oil. Cook for about 40 minutes or until roasted, flipping halfway to make sure its all even. Well, as even as it will get. Fun fact: Smaller cubes that have lots of olive oil go really crispy and are fun to eat straight out of the oven.

2. Slice mushrooms and fry in a little olive oil until browned. Turn heat to medium-low, add diced tomatoes, and heat. Add eggplant and let the sauce thicken.

3. At this point, you can cook the pasta and serve it, or refrigerate the sauce for later. I haven't tried freezing it yet, I'm not sure about how it would go with the texture of the eggplant, but I made mine before uni and threw it in the fridge until dinner and it turned out fine!

Penne alla Vodka

My friend Sian, who is one of the most delightful people ever, posted this on her blog a year ago and its taken me this long to get around to making it. I'd had it once before from a restaurant, and I remember enjoying it, so I figured it couldn't go too badly.
SPOILER: I WAS RIGHT.
Aside from not mixing it very well, so I occasionally had a big vodka-y bit of pasta that made me choke a little, it was really delicious and I will make it again, vodka permitting. Although I wouldn't put it past me to buy vodka specifically for cooking this. Pasta + cream + parmesan = the best. Siany's recipe was vegetarian, but I googled around a bit and people seem to like putting bacon in it, so I settled for chorizo because it was on special and I was not disappointed.

The second time I ate it (leftovers for lunch the next day) I used regular cheese instead of parmesan, and it was delightful.

PENNE ALLA VODKA
Serves four
Total time commitment: 30 minutes
Recipe from Monster Girl Writes

1 onion
400g can diced tomatoes
Herbs (Sian recommends oregano and basil)
200g penne
Olive oil
Garlic
2 Tbsp thickened cream
2 Tbsp butter
1/4 cup vodka
Parmesan or another form of cheese
Chorizo (optional)

1. Put water for the pasta on to boil. Heat the oil and garlic in a pan, finely dice the onion and cook until golden.

2. Add pasta to boiling water. Meanwhile, add the can of diced tomatoes and herbs to the onion mixture, and cook until heated through. This should take about ten minutes, roughly the same time it will take for your pasta to be al dente (fancy way to say cooked but chewy).

3. If you're using chorizo, start cutting this up and frying it now while you drain the pasta, because the part of the stove you just cooked the pasta on is still hot so you won't waste time heating a third thingy. We're all about technical terms in this kitchen.

4. Return the drained pasta to the pan and stir through the butter so the pasta is coated. Add the vodka to the pasta and mix, then add the tomatoey, creamy sauce. Combine everything, serve into bowls, and top with parmesan or other cheese and chorizo, if you're being that kind of awesome.

Pasta with Peas

I've spent the last two days trying to post and blogger hasn't been loading. How awkward for blogger.

This recipe is one that, as the book says, could probably be whipped up in the depths of a nuclear winter. Considering how quick and easy it is, I was expecting it to taste a lot more bland than it did. I actually timed this to see exactly how long it took to cook - 22 minutes and 7 seconds - but most of that was waiting for the pasta to boil. It was very easy and didn't take a lot of effort, which is what you need on a Sunday night.

PASTA WITH PEAS
Serves three
Total time commitment: 22 minutes 7 seconds
From the second Leon cookbook

1 leek
1 onion
Olive oil
Bit of butter
Garlic
Peas
Parmesan
Pasta

1. Boil some water for your pasta. I think you can cook the pasta without much direction.

2. Heat a little bit of oil and butter in a pan. Don't have the heat too high or it will burn. While this is warming up, or beforehand if you are not speedy with your knife skills and worry about hot oil spitting at you out of the pan, cut up the leek (thinly) and onion (diced).

3. Chuck some garlic in the pan for extra flavour, and then add the leek and onion. Let them soften a bit.

4. Add some peas - I didn't measure, just added until it looked nice.

5. Hopefully your pasta is done - top the pasta with leek and pea mix, and top that with as much parmesan as you can handle.

Lasagne

This lasagne recipe has to be one of the easiest things ever.

And oh man, has this lasagne has got me through a tough week.

Like that time I didn't sleep enough and cried because I'd already eaten two servings and I still wanted more. Seriously, this is why I advocate going to bed early. But also why I advocate this lasagne, it is clearly delicious. I mean just look at all that cheese.

LASAGNE
Serves 6-8, you don't want to cry because you didn't eat enough
Total time commitment: 10 minutes actively doing things, 45 minutes cooking; not including actually making the bolognese and white sauce
Recipe from common sense/Mum's advice


2 quantities of bolognese sauce
1-2 quantities of white sauce, depending on your mood
Lasagne sheets
Extra cheese

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Get a large baking dish and layer it with half of the bolognese sauce.

2. Top with lasagne sheets so you're covering the top of it.

3. Add the rest of the bolognese.

4. Add more lasagne sheets.

5. Pour the white sauce over the top. Mmm, delicious.

6. Grate extra cheese on top. Even more delicious.

7. Pop it in the oven and cook until the cheese is golden and delicious and the lasagne sheets aren't chewy any more. It will probably collapse a bit as you serve it, embrace it as the joyful mess of lasagne.

DELICIOUS JOY.

Prosciutto, Sage and Pumpkin Spaghetti

Firstly, can I just say, why does GO! have an ad for Harry Potter that is some kind of rap using lines from the film? What is even happening there?

Ok. I'm glad we got that out of the way.

Because now, we can get on to one of the most delicious pastas I have cooked in a while. When I was visiting Grandma and Grandpa a while ago, I was lamenting that now I don't get the recipe liftout from the paper any more, so Grandpa started collecting them for me. Isn't that just the best? This is a Marg Johnson recipe I've taken from my collection. With added feta, just for kicks.

While I've got you here - is anyone else sick of Valentine's Day things already? I just DON'T CARE. Although I saw this on a craft blog and I think its appropriately cute and lacking in pink and hearts.

How to make custom fingerprint art on ManMade

The original recipe called for 2tbsp lemon juice to be added to the pasta when you're combining it, which I didn't do because I didn't have any. I don't think it would go that well with the feta - any opinions?

PROSCIUTTO, SAGE AND PUMPKIN SPAGHETTI

Original recipe by Marg Johnson
Serves 4
Total time commitment: 40 minutes. Most of this is waiting for the pumpkin to roast, so if you can pre-cook the pumpkin the time will be cut down to around 20 minutes.


Olive oil
1/2 large pumpkin or 1 small pumpkin, cut into chunks
Handful sage leaves
1 tbsp garlic
Chilli flakes
100g prosciutto
400g spaghetti

1. Place the cut pumpkin into a baking dish, drizzle with olive oil, and top with garlic, sage leaves and chilli flakes. Doesn't that look like it's going to be delicious?

2. Cook at 200C until tender. You need to be able to stick a fork through the pumpkin. This should take about 25-30 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, bring a pot of water to the boil and cook the spaghetti. When the pumpkin is just about done, place a tray with the prosciutto in a single layer in the oven. Cook it for about ten minutes until its crispy.

4. Time to combine everything! Place the pumpkin and pasta in a large bowl and toss to combine. Crumble prosciutto and feta on top and serve.

Pasta al Diavolo

This is based on the pasta dish I had at the Uber Blonde's 21st last night (Happy birthday, my sensuous peahen!), and Miss Italia has just informed me that "diavolo" means "devil". Which explains why it was so spicy, so I hope everyone enjoyed that little Italian lesson.

Its Production Week Take Two this week - after Panto finished, I thought I was free, but one of my theatre units is backstage work for a production and its production week this week. Not quite as crazy as Panto (I don't anticipate any 3am finishes, let alone two!), but it does mean that I'm going to spend this week pulling a Nigella every night! And you know what? I'm okay with that. I'm a uni student, after all. The fact that I'm not  resorting to a week of Mi Goreng is impressive. I saved some of this for lunch tomorrow, I am excited!

PASTA AL DIAVOLO


1 chorizo sausage
10 mushrooms or so
Crushed garlic
500g fettuccine
Parmesan cheese
Chilli flakes
Jalapenos (if you're game!)
1 jar stir-through pasta sauce (I used Leggo's Tomato, Olive and Chilli)

1. While the water is coming to the boil for the pasta, chop up the mushrooms and chorizo and put some garlic and olive oil in a pan

2. Cook the pasta at the same time as you fry the chorizo and mushrooms. MULTITASKING, YO.

3. Drain the pasta, put it back in the saucepan, and pour the pasta sauce, chorizo and mushroom on top of it. Add some jalapenos and shakes of chilli flakes and mix it all about.

4. Serve with some parmesan sprinkled over the top - it softens the blow of the chilli a little!

Macaroni Cheese

See, I promised, didn't I?

MACARONI CHEESE

Serves four very hungry students

400g pasta

Double quantity of white sauce

MOAR CHEESE

1. Cook the pasta while you make the white sauce, and get the oven to preheat at 180C while you do that. This is the hardest step! So much to coordinate!

2. Put the pasta into a baking dish.

3. Pour the sauce over the pasta.

4. Grate some more cheese on the top

5. Put it in the oven and wait for it to delicious itself.

Pumpkin Gnocchi

I made regular potato gnocchi one when I still lived with mum and dad, and it was a disaster. So I didn't have high hopes for the pumpkin gnocchi, but it was lovely and simple and helped me finish the six kilos of pumpkin! This is one of the many, many recipes I've bookmarked from Closet Cooking. It helps if you have an entire pumpkin cooked, mashed and frozen in portions in the freezer, I'm just putting that one out there.

I made this once with a white sauce, and then froze the rest of the gnocchi and cooked it last night with a tomato sauce. Both were perfectly acceptable.

PUMPKIN GNOCCHI

2 cups cooked, mashed pumpkin

2 cups plain flour

1. Mix together

2. Flour the bench and roll out a handful of the dough into a sausage shape

3. Cut it up into bite-size pieces. Do this for all the dough.

4. Cook the gnocchi in boiling water until it rises to the top of the saucepan

5. If you want to freeze some, squirrel it away now! If not, eat it with all its delicious goodness.

Eggplant Parmigiana

I started writing this mid-cooking last week, then started running late for Panto (even more so than I was!) and neglected it until today. Catchups!

I bought an eggplant on my weekly shopping trip with Gordo (so named because of his resemblance to this guy right here), and I couldn't think of what on earth to do with it so I adapted this from my usual Vegetarian Schnitzel recipe, which goes:

1. Put schnitzel in a baking tray

2. Cover with a can of diced tomatoes

3. Cover with cheese and put in the oven for 15 minutes while you make some spaghetti to eat it with.

I did get halfway through this and have a horrendous moment where I thought we had no diced tomatoes, but thankfully I'd bought some on special the week before last week. CRISIS AVERTED, GUYS.

EGGPLANT PARMIGIANA

This was more than enough for me, it could have fed anywhere from two very hungry people to four moderately hungry people. I suppose it depends on eggplant sizings and how much pasta you like.

1/2 a large eggplant, sliced (I do like... 1.5cm slices, its up to you)

1 small onion, diced

1 tsp crushed garlic

Olive Oil

1 small can diced tomatoes (you know, regulation can size... 400mL or so)

Cheese (I used tasty, gruyere and parmesan)

As much pasta as you like!

1. Salt the slices of eggplant and leave them to drain for about half an hour. This makes them easier to cook, apparently. MUM SAID TO DO IT OKAY, TRUST ME.

2. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, cook up the onion in the garlic and olive oil. Step back for a minute and smell how good it is (bonus smell points if you substitute olive oil for butter). Add the tomatoes and make it into a base. Saucy!

3. See what I did there with the 'saucy' pun?

4. Put the eggplant in a baking dish and pour the tomatoes over the top. Grate some cheese onto there and put it in the oven for about 15-20 minutes - I judge it by how melty and delicious the cheese is.

5. While this is happening, cook some pasta. I use fettuccine. Put that in a bowl, put a slice of eggplant/tomato/cheese on top, and away you go!

Mediterranean Pasta

This was a quickly put-together lunch by me and Spazzy McGee after we decided that the tapas menu at the cafe we attended didn't look as good as we anticipated. Today was a little upsetting as I slept in (+5!) and then went to the airport to see my Sensei off on his 6 month European/American trip (-20).

I sent him off with my Phantom of the Opera medallion (in lieu of the St Christopher medal that I think is at my parents' house) and a note to keep in his wallet saying "I miss you like fuck", so hopefully that will keep him safe and happy until January!

This pasta was delicious and rather bastardised from a recipe Mama and I found in the newspaper that was essentially cherry tomatoes and basil leaves cooked in olive oil and garlic, tossed through spaghetti. In hindsight, I could have used some basil leaves from the plant I have going on my windowsill, but that is for next time.

MEDITERRANEAN PASTA

50g Pitted Kalamata Olives

25g Stuffed Green Olives

50g Sundried Tomatoes

25g Cherry Tomatoes

1 tsp crushed garlic

Drizzle of Olive Oil

Spaghetti

1. Heat the olive oil and garlic in a pan

2. Halve olive and tomato ingredients and fry in pan with olive oil and garlic. Add basil leaves if you remember and/or wish!

3. Cook the spaghetti while all this is going on. Hopefully you read the whole recipe first so this isn't going to get awkward with the other ingredients cooling before the pasta is done.

4. Toss the spaghetti in the other ingredients (or toss the other ingredients in the spaghetti? I'm not sure how that works. COMBINE THEM) and enjoy!