Orecchiette with Eggplant & Slow Sizzled Tomato
You know Samin Nosrat’s book Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat? If you don’t have it, go get it - it’s great! Samin taught me how to make actual mayonnaise with eggs and olive oil without splitting it and turning it runny. It’s a magical thing; bright yellow and flavoured with crushed garlic, lemon juice and dijon mustard and if you follow her instructions it ends up ACTUALLY thick. The trick is to do exactly what Samin says and add ONLY ONE DROP of olive oil at a time, whisking in a mad frenzy all the while (can highly recommend using an electric beater).
Anyway, the one thing she seems to have omitted from her book (which focuses on perfecting the essential elements of cooking - salt, fat, acid, heat) is the magical fifth ingredient that will affect every single dish you’ll ever make: time. Getting time wrong is what takes beautiful, ever-so-slightly crunchy Brussels sprouts into the miserable land of 1950s canteen-food-slurry. It’s what turns deliciously creamy scrambled eggs into overcooked, dry bits of rubber. It’s the difference between perfectly chilled wine and a frozen chardonnay popsicle, and… you get the point. Time matters!! But also patience is hard.
I’m not very patient with dinner. By the time I start cooking I’m usually too hungry - I like it to be on the table in 30 minutes or I start to feel weary and defeated and sit on the kitchen floor thumbing my way through instagram photos of other people’s dinners and sulking and wishing they were mine. But in the case of today’s recipe, time makes ALL the difference. You have to grill the eggplant and capsicum long enough to turn them silky and caramelised, and slow cooking the tomatoes with butter, garlic and lemon peel is THE BEST (and maybe only?) way to get them to hit their peak of rich, umami flavours. So, while I’ve recommended a fairly modest 30 minutes of slow-frying and grilling in this recipe, as a general rule of thumb, a little patience and extra time with this dish goes a long way. Sizzle the tomatoes low and slow, let the eggplant and capsicum grill gently and you’ll have the punchiest, tastiest pasta sauce ever. Fortunately, what this dish lacks in speed it makes up for with easiness. And when you’re cooking slowly it’s much harder to make any fatal errors, so you could most definitely get away with a generous glass of wine or an episode of your favourite gritty drug-trafficking television drama while you’re making it.
Orecchiette with Eggplant & Slow Sizzled Tomato
Serves 4
Ingredients
2 red capsicums, quartered lengthwise and seeds removed
1 eggplant, cut into slices about 2cm thick
2 Tbsp olive oil
4 serves of orecchiette pasta
2 Tbsp butter
1 brown onion, cut into chunky wedges
3 Roma tomatoes, diced
1 1/2 cups cherry tomatoes
Lemon peel (3-4 pieces)
5 cloves garlic, finely diced
1 cup of pitted Kalamata olives
A handful of fresh (preferably Italian) parsley, roughly chopped
Method
Toss the capsicums and eggplant slices in the olive oil, sprinkle with salt and put on a baking tray. Place under a moderate grill and cook for about 15-20 minutes, checking often to make sure nothing is burning.
Flip the capsicum and eggplant slices over about halfway through cooking to make sure they are well cooked on both sides. Some grills might accomplish this a lot faster than others - basically you want your capsicum to be very soft and silky, maybe with a few little charred edges, and the eggplant to have softened, with a smooth, silky, almost oily texture and slightly browned edges. Once silky and caramelised, remove from the grill and set aside.
While the veggies grill, melt the butter in a large saucepan until it has started to brown a little. Add the brown onion and cook on moderate heat, stirring often, until the onion has softened and browned. Reduce the heat, add the Roma tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, lemon peel, garlic and a generous pinch of salt.
Cook, stirring every so often, for 20-30 minutes, until the cherry tomatoes have blistered and softened, and the Roma tomatoes have melted down into the sauce. Add the Kalamata olives. Taste and adjust the flavour if required (you might add a pinch of sugar, a splash of balsamic vinegar or simply more salt and cracked pepper - trust your instincts and taste as you go).
Once the tomatoes have begun to soften, pop your pasta on to cook according to the instructions on the packet (also - make sure to salt the water very generously before adding the pasta - Samin has tips on that too!) If you can’t get your hands on Orecchiette no stress, this would be great with penne or any kind of pasta really. If your tomato sauce starts to dry out while the pasta is cooking, just add a little bit of the salty water from the pot of cooking pasta.
Drain the cooked pasta, roughly chop the grilled vegetables into big chunks and add everything to the tomato sauce. Stir well to coat the pasta in sauce and mix through the grilled vegetables (and to reheat them if they’ve cooled post-grilling). Serve at once, with chilli flakes and sharp pecorino cheese grated on top. Plus lots of ground pepper! A handful of parsley wouldn’t go astray either.
