Foodporn: Sausage-Eggplant-Pasta Bake
You know the dilemmas: how do you keep up with all the lovely local produce? What on earth, especially, do you do with the other half of the giant eggplant? What, further, do you do with the Viking-themed, Ohio-wine-country "red table wine" brought as a hostess gift1 by some recent houseguests? "But Why is the Rum Gone?" Test Kitchens now brings you the only-partly-fictional answer to your early-period-pirate (Yarr...ahem, "IaR") eggplanty prayers, a casserole that does just the trick:
Sausage-Eggplant-Pasta Bake
500 g sweet or fennel sausage
half a large eggplant, sliced into cm rings and then quartered
large onion, diced
2 shallots, sliced
2 large tomatoes (I used a red and a yellow), diced
quarter of a preserved lemon, small dice (it's potent!)
1 dL tomato sauce
tsp Penzey's Turkish seasoning (optional)
300 g pasta (I used campanelle)
Viking Vineyards' "Valhalla"2 wine
grated Italiany cheese for sprinkling
In a large pan over high heat, brown the sausage, and then remove to a large baking dish. Set your pasta to cook; when it's done, reserve about 1.5 dL of the cooking liquid, and drain the rest. (Time this to coincide with the tomato sauce, below, being done. It'll be easier this way, trust me.) Preheat your oven to 180ºC/350ºF.
In the grease rendered out from the sausage, saute the eggplant in batches until it browns (you may need to add more oil for subsequent batches but CAUTION: EGGPLANT IS MORE ABSORBENT THAN BRAWNY, KOTEX, OR YOUR CAT--you are warned). Dump artfully over the sausage in the aforementioned baking dish.
Saute the onion and shallots together until translucent. Add the diced tomatoes and the diced preserved lemon, and stir.
Open the wine, and have a smell like you always do. Stop abruptly. You were going to use this wine to develop the tomato flavour of the sauce, as quite a few of the tomato flavours are really only alcohol-soluble,3 but it's just...unappealing. Pour yourself a small tumbler, to test it. Gag on the most un-red-wine-like thing you've managed to taste. Decide the correct answer was "joke" (see note 1), and set it aside.4 Make a sad face, and wonder how your audience shall ever forgive you.
Pour the reserved pasta water into the tomato sauce to thin it, and pour it over the tomato-onion mixture in the pan. Sprinkle on a little Turkish seasoning to change the depth of the flavour. Let the sauce cook down just a little over high heat. Pour the drained pasta and the sauce over the sauteed sausage and eggplant. Smooth down a little bit, as your pile of layers is getting a bit unwieldy. Sprinkle with grated cheese. Bake for 20 minutes.
Unpleasant mead-wine unpotable aside, this is actually a really delicious casserole, and no one should be ashamed except this Viking Vineyards place.
1 Said gift was meant "either as a gift or a joke; it'll be a surprise when you open it."
2 Names not changed, to point fingers.
3 Alton Brown said so, so it's true.
4 Surprisingly enough, this episode never actually uses the alcohol we normally enjoy. Very sorry.
Sausage-Eggplant-Pasta Bake
500 g sweet or fennel sausage
half a large eggplant, sliced into cm rings and then quartered
large onion, diced
2 shallots, sliced
2 large tomatoes (I used a red and a yellow), diced
quarter of a preserved lemon, small dice (it's potent!)
1 dL tomato sauce
tsp Penzey's Turkish seasoning (optional)
300 g pasta (I used campanelle)
Viking Vineyards' "Valhalla"2 wine
grated Italiany cheese for sprinkling
In a large pan over high heat, brown the sausage, and then remove to a large baking dish. Set your pasta to cook; when it's done, reserve about 1.5 dL of the cooking liquid, and drain the rest. (Time this to coincide with the tomato sauce, below, being done. It'll be easier this way, trust me.) Preheat your oven to 180ºC/350ºF.
In the grease rendered out from the sausage, saute the eggplant in batches until it browns (you may need to add more oil for subsequent batches but CAUTION: EGGPLANT IS MORE ABSORBENT THAN BRAWNY, KOTEX, OR YOUR CAT--you are warned). Dump artfully over the sausage in the aforementioned baking dish.
Saute the onion and shallots together until translucent. Add the diced tomatoes and the diced preserved lemon, and stir.
Open the wine, and have a smell like you always do. Stop abruptly. You were going to use this wine to develop the tomato flavour of the sauce, as quite a few of the tomato flavours are really only alcohol-soluble,3 but it's just...unappealing. Pour yourself a small tumbler, to test it. Gag on the most un-red-wine-like thing you've managed to taste. Decide the correct answer was "joke" (see note 1), and set it aside.4 Make a sad face, and wonder how your audience shall ever forgive you.
Pour the reserved pasta water into the tomato sauce to thin it, and pour it over the tomato-onion mixture in the pan. Sprinkle on a little Turkish seasoning to change the depth of the flavour. Let the sauce cook down just a little over high heat. Pour the drained pasta and the sauce over the sauteed sausage and eggplant. Smooth down a little bit, as your pile of layers is getting a bit unwieldy. Sprinkle with grated cheese. Bake for 20 minutes.
Unpleasant mead-wine unpotable aside, this is actually a really delicious casserole, and no one should be ashamed except this Viking Vineyards place.
1 Said gift was meant "either as a gift or a joke; it'll be a surprise when you open it."
2 Names not changed, to point fingers.
3 Alton Brown said so, so it's true.
4 Surprisingly enough, this episode never actually uses the alcohol we normally enjoy. Very sorry.