roasted eggplant pasta

aka "The Best Pasta I've Ever Made" - Brad Morrice.

Sorry there are no pictures of this gorgeous meal. We ate it verrrrrrrrrry quickly! And it all started like so. My always-eats-pasta-for-lunch husband didn't eat pasta for lunch. And so I could make it for dinner - which is always a relief since I find pasta dishes the least amount of work (no thawing meat, etc). Until I remembered that we had basically no veggies to add to any dish, and no fresh herbs, except parsley. But thanks to google, none of this was a problem and I got some incredible ideas to use up the very few ingredients we had on hand:

parsley 

1 eggplant

3 cloves garlic

6 over-sized cherry tomatoes

half a bundle of green onions

half a jar of slices, pitted black olives

I collaborated with several recipes and added my own ideas too. See, normally, I do one of two things with eggplant: Make eggplant Parmesan or grill eggplant on the BBQ. I wasn't in the mood for a red sauce and it was too cold to BBQ, so I had to get creative and I'm so glad I did.  Both Brad and I were shocked at how extremely delicious roasted eggplant was! If you try any new pasta dish this week PLEASE LET THIS ONE BE IT. Come lunch time, we were fighting over the leftovers :)

Step 1: chop eggplant in chunks and toss with generous olive oil (eggplant absorbs a LOT so take the word 'generous' seriously), sea salt, and pepper. Roast @ 400 for 20 minutes.

Step 2: while eggplant is roasting, cook pasta for the dish (penne or fusilli would work best, we think), set aside

Step 3:While eggplant is roasting + pasta is cooking, chop up fresh tomatoes in chunks, the sliced black olives, and fresh parsley and toss with olive oil, ground pepper. Keep in a bowl. You won't actually ever cook these ingredients.

Step 4: In a large frying pan, saute olive oil, garlic, some crushed red hot pepper flakes, and chopped green onion until fragrant. 

Step 5: once oil mixture is fragrant, add cooked pasta and toss. Put heat down to low.

Step 6. add fresh tomato, olives, and parsley and toss. Be careful not to over cook the tomatoes. They're supposed to taste fresh but be warm. Then add roasted eggplant, toss everything together, and adjust seasonings accordingly (more oil, hot peppers, salt, etc)

I topped mine with some Parmesan cheese and ground pepper, but the flavours were so strong and balanced, we didn't need any salt or hot peppers like we usually would add. I think the key to this recipe being so amazing was the layers of flavour. You had roasted, sauteed, and fresh, all together in one glorious pan. The eggplant roasted up to be a balance of sweet and salty and the texture was creamy. The onions, garlic, and hot pepper flakes added a heat to it on top of all of that. It.was.amazing.