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!