Baked Eggplant Pasta
Pasta Melanzane al Forno
This dish is inspired by my sister Angela. A tomato sauce with eggplants enriched with bechamel sauce is baked with pappardelle in the oven. Note that as you shallow fry the eggplants , it will require topping up with more oil as the eggplant is absorbent like a sponge. Don’t worry, you will drain the eggplant on paper towels but what is left in the eggplant makes this sauce super silky. Of course , if you want to simplify things , just use the tomato eggplant sauce over freshed cooked pasta for a quick dish. Trust me though, it is worth the extra 5 min to make the bechamel , then wait an hour for the baked silky goodness.
Recipe
Serves 8
Ingredients
1 onion
2 carrots
3 celery sticks
Decent amount of olive oil – have the bottle handy and keep adding when necessary
2 bottles of tomato passata
2 large eggplants - thinly slice 1 eggplant into 3 mm thick rounds, roughly chop the other.
500 g of dried pappardelle (with egg if possible)
Pinch of salt
50 grams of butter
3 tablespoon of plain flour
2 ½ cups of milk
Freshly grated nutmeg
150 g of shredded mozzarella
2 cups of freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Method
Put the onion, carrots and celery in a food processor and blend (called the sofrito)
In a large pot, gently fry the sofrito in some olive oil until caramelised. Add 2 bottles of passata.
Put the roughly chopped eggplant into the sauce and let it simmer for about 15 minutes.
In the meantime, boil the pasta for 1 minute less than the packet instruction in salted water and save one cup of the pasta water for later use i.e. the pasta needs to be very al dente as it will cook further in the oven
To make the bechamel sauce, in a small saucepan melt the butter, then add the flour and continuously whisk until smooth. Add the milk and a pinch of grated nutmeg, and continue whisking until thickened
Shallow fry the eggplant rounds in a frying pan with enough oil to cover the base of the pan. Keep adding oil as the eggplant quickly soaks it up. Fry until both sides are browned
Transfer onto paper towel to absorb the excess oil and set aside for use in Step 9
Now you are ready to put together the dish: Firstly mix the drained pasta into the eggplant sauce. Add the bechamel sauce and mix well. If you think it’s a little thick, add a little of the saved pasta water to loosen it up. Now add 1 cup of the parmesan cheese to the pasta mixture
Tip this pasta mix into a 25 x 35 cm dish. Sprinkle the top with the remaining Parmesan and mozzarella cheese. Top the dish with the fried eggplant rounds.
Bake in a oven (350F or 175C) for 1 hour.
Let it sit for 5 to 10 minutes before cutting into squares to serve
Now tell me that isn’t a wonderful way to eat eggplants!