Vego Pasta

The apple crumble was a disaster; I needed to follow up strong, so I reverted back to my trusty pasta dishes. Generally when I make pasta dishes I tend to use whatever is left over in our fridge. Infact the whole exercise revolves around me trying to finish up various bits of items left over from other recipes. Last night was no exception.

We had a jar of sundried tomato pesto in the fridge which had been there for about a month. That needed to be used. We had tomatoes that we had bought in bulk from the market that were going soft. They too needed to be used. There was a piece of capsicum in the vegetable drawer of the fridge left over from a random curry my mum had made. There was a lonely zucchini and an eggplant. Funnily enough there was also half a bag of spiral pasta in the pantry, so I decided to put it all together.

Ingredients (serves 2):

• 250 grams of pasta (whatever sort you have handy)
• Enough water to cook the pasta

• 1 tbs olive oil
• ½ an onion, sliced finely
• About 3 tbs of sundried tomato pesto (I’m sure basil pesto would work just as well)
• 1 large, well ripe tomato, diced
• 1 side of capsicum, diced
• ½ of a large zucchini, diced
• 1/3 of a large eggplant, diced
• ½ cup milk
• Oregano to taste

Bring water to boil and cook your pasta according to directions. I have no idea how pasta is meant to be cooked properly, but I’ve heard that adding about 1 tsp salt and about 1 tbs oil to the boiling water prevents the pasta from sticking. It seems to work.

While your pasta is boiling away, heat the olive oil in a pan and lightly brown the onions. Once this is done add in tomatoes and sautee for a minute or two. Then add zucchini and eggplant and continue for another two minutes. Finally add in the capsicum. The tomatoes should have made the vegetable mixture go reasonably gluggy.

To this, add the pesto and stir a bit longer. Once everything is mixed nicely, add the milk and let it simmer for about 3 minutes. Before you think adding milk is a ridiculous idea, bear in mind I was exactly the same. But D convinced me otherwise. Apparently he thinks its normal to simmer everything in milk because it makes it more creamy, rather than water which will thin it down. It seems logical enough, so I do it.

Anyway, by this time the pasta should be about done, so add a few generous ladles of the pasta water and let it simmer some more until the consistency is nice. In the meantime drain the pasta also.

Add a sprinkle of oregano (and chilli flakes, which I totally forgot about, grrr), give it a quick stir and mix it into the pasta.

VOILA!