smoky eggplant pasta

Pre-heat the oven to 475 F (250 C) or even hotter, with a dry cast-iron pan on a low rack. Once the oven is ready, place into this very hot, dry pan

• half an eggplant (cut side down) or two halves of a small eggplant,
• a tomato or two cut in half, and
• one coarsely chopped onion.

Ignore this for 45 minutes; it's supposed to burn. Then pull it out, peel the eggplant and tomatoes with tweezers, and add

• 1 cup (250 ml) heavy cream,
• lots of pepper and salt,
• 1 tbsp each of tomato paste and vinegar
• paprika (optional), thyme (optional), crushed garlic (optional), and
• mushroom powder (optional) or a broth cube (optional).

Chop up the roasted veg in the cream with your metal spatula so it's chunky, and also scrape the pan to get the burned bits into the sauce. Simmer on the stovetop (or in a 250 F or 120 C oven), covered, for 45 minutes. At the end, cook (or even slightly under-cook) 1/2 lb of pasta of choice (I like fettuccine for this). Add to the sauce

• 1/2 cup of the pasta water,
• the pasta, and
• a handful of chopped fresh basil.

Mix, and serve, with an enormous amount of grated parmesan cheese. Serves 3.

ratatouille

Here's what I did (with some help from the 'fuzz) to make the simplest possible ratatouille with all our farmer's-market late-summer vegetables:

• 2 onions, sliced
• 6 small eggplants (or 2-3 huge supermarket-style ones), diced
• 3 zucchini, diced
• a few sweet peppers, seeded and diced
• 3 large tomatoes, diced
• a few tbsp fresh basil, chopped
• salt, pepper, olive oil

Soften the onions (and maybe some garlic) in a lot of olive oil. Add eggplant and cook until it starts to soften. Add zucchini and peppers and cook until the zucchini starts to soften. Add tomatoes and basil and a fair bit of salt and pepper and simmer until the whole thing turns into ratatouille (about an hour, maybe less). Fix seasoning at the end. Serve with crusty bread, and then freeze some for the coming winter.