Since it is vacation week I have been trying to really step up my cooking. Tonight I adapted a recipe from Smitten Kitchen, a beautiful food blog! I’ve never made a recipe from Smitten Kitchen but I often salivate while reading her posts. Def check it out if you haven’t already. I love eggplant so this recipe was an easy choice.

First things first, you have to roast cherry tomato, egg plant and garlic. Chop up the eggplant and tomato and add S&P, red pepper flakes, and EVO. 400 degrees for 54 mins…

While doing that put a generous handful of pine nuts in a dish and put on the bottom rack of the oven for 5 mins.

I present before:

and now for after:

I highly recommend NOT skipping this step. Toasting the pine nuts really makes all the difference.

While all of this is going on, cook the pasta in salted water. It’s all about the multitasking people. Tonight I found a bag of linguine I didn’t now that I had so I used that. Side note: not a huge fan of trader joe’s linguine. It gets very mushy very fast. It was still ok but mushy pasta isn’t my favorite.

When the eggplant and tomato and garlic is done roasted combine it in the food processor. Smitten Kitchen warmed of the sauce not getting “saucey” enough. Probably due to the amount of tomatoes I roasted. Well mine was pretty saucey so I only pulsed the processor a few times.

Then transfer to the pot you used for boiling the pasta and add a small amount of balsamic vinegar and some pasta water. Add the pine nuts.

Then add Parmesan cheese. Heat and mix, then add the pasta.

Now I will admit that roasted eggplant isn’t exactly the prettiest thing on earth, but I love eggplant and thus I highly enjoyed this dish.

Final product:

I have to say, if you like eggplant, you will like this. The red pepper flakes add a little zing and the toasted pine nuts really stand out in this dish. I loved it, and a very easy sauce to make!

I will make this again but I will likely use a different pasta. Stay tuned for another EPIC dinner tomorrow night!