Roasted Aubergine, Red Pepper & Garlic Dip

This is always one of my favourite times of the month - Secret Recipe Club reveal day.  That day when I, along with all my fellow participants, get to reveal our assigned blog (that person we have been "cyber stalking" for the last month) and the dish we have made from their blog.

But I do have a confession to make.  You see, I have committed the worst possible SRC crime - yes, I was supposed to post this a couple of weeks ago, but made a total mix up of dates and left my assigned blog hanging - Amy, how will you ever forgive me?  Thankfully our host, Sarah, has allowed me to atone for my sins by putting up my post this week with a different group.

Anyways, enough about that.  My assigned blog this month was Fearless Homemaker, hosted as you are now aware by Amy.  Raised in Boston, and now living in Nashville, Amy is a self-described food and cocktail lover, enthusiastic entertainer, and crafty DIYer.  Amy has a masters degree in Positive Psychology, and works as a co-ordinator for Cultural Care Au Pair.  She is passionate about cultural exchange, and working with the American host families and their international au pairs to ensure a positive experience for everyone.

Amy had so many recipes I wanted to try (every one of them beautifully photographed), and a number of them have now been pinned for me to make at a later date, like this Slow-Cooker Chicken & Mushroom Farro Risotto, Spaghetti with Oven Roasted Tomatoes & Caramelised Fennel, and this Glazed Lemon Pound Cake.  Actually it was the lemon pound cake that I was intent on making, but with an aubergine hanging around in the veggie bin which was in dire need of being used up, it was Amy's Roasted Eggplant, Red Pepper & Garlic Spread that won the day.

This was quick and easy to prepare, particularly using some ready roasted red peppers as I did - I roast loads of them during the season, and then bottle them in olive oil.  Just perfect for adding to salads, antipasto platters, casseroles, and pasta sauces throughout the rest of the year.  I skipped the onion, since we're not much fussed on it around here, and I added in a little bit of chilli paste for an extra kick, and a bit of paprika for it's lovely smokiness which I think is perfect with eggplant.

This dip is wonderful used, as Amy did, as a spread on fresh bread.  It would also be great served as a dip for other vegetables.  We used it as a rich, flavourful sauce for pasta, and would also be wonderful used as a pizza sauce - a great alternative for those who are sensitive to tomatoes.  This was so good, I made a second batch, which I've now stashed in the freezer ready for a quick mid-week meal.

Roasted Aubergine, Red Pepper & Garlic Dip
Adapted from this recipe at Fearless Homemaker
Click here for the free recipe card

1x medium sized aubergine, cut into 2.5cm (1 inch) cubes
olive oil
flaky sea salt & freshly ground black pepper
3x roasted red peppers, preserved in olive oil, drained and roughly chopped
(or 2x fresh red peppers, deseeded and cut into 2.5cm (1 inch) chunks)
2x cloves garlic, unpeeled and left whole
2 teaspoons chilli paste
1 teaspoon smoky paprika
1 tablespoon tomato paste (leave this out if you are sensitive to tomatoes)

Preheat oven to 220 degrees C (425 degrees F).

Toss eggplant cubes and garlic cloves with a generous slosh of olive oil, and a good seasoning of flaky sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.  (If you're using fresh red peppers, toss them in as well.)

Line a shallow roasting tray with baking parchment and spread vegetables in a single layer over the tray.  Place tray in the oven and roast until tender and golden - about 20 to 30 minutes.  (Keep an eye on the garlic - it can burn quickly, so you may want to remove it half way through.) Remove from the oven and allow to cool to room temperature.

Squeeze garlic cloves out of their skins, and add them to a food processor, along with the eggplant and peppers.  Blitz to a coarse paste.  Add the chilli paste, paprika, tomato paste, and a generous slosh of olive oil (I used the reserved oil from the roasted peppers).  Process until you reach a spreadable consistency.  Taste and season with extra sea salt and pepper if desired.

Hope you enjoy this dish as much as I did, and visit the links below to check out all the other great dishes my Secret Recipe Club friends made.

Also shared at Hearth and Soul, hosted by the lovely April J. Harris.

An InLinkz Link-up

Best Tomato Pasta Sauce Ever

I say it so often here that I should not have been surprised by this.  The best food of all is that which hasn't been messed with too much, but which is a simple combining of good quality, great tasting ingredients.  Yet, I was still shocked at how blindlingly good this simple tomato pasta sauce tasted.

In my effort to keep up with my massive tomato crop I've been telling you about, making some tomato ketchup seemed like an option.  "But why?" inquired the other mouth that I feed.  He is of the opinion that nobody could do a better job of it than Watties, and a sauce that actually tastes of ... well, tomatoes ... instead of preservatives and other things you can't pronounce, would just be too much of a shock to his tastebuds.  In fairness, he's come a long way and appreciates great food when it's given to him.  But there are some things he will always consider to be vaguely inferior when made at home - namely, tomato sauce, ice cream, and bread.  Still, I'm convinced that if I can come up with a good tomato sauce, and sneak it into the Watties bottle when he's not looking, then I have a pretty fair chance of passing it off as the "real deal".  Keep watching this space!

In the meantime, I decided a batch of tomato pasta sauce would take care of a few tomatoes, and would never go astray around our house.  Of course, when looking for a good sauce recipe, the first place I turned to was the Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan.  Marcella is the high priestess of Italian cooking, as far as I'm concerned, and this book is like my bible when it comes to Italian food.  Trust me when I tell you that, if you have no other Italian cookbook in your collection it should be this one.

When I found Marcella's recipe for Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter, my initial reaction was that I could "trick it up a little" by adding in some garlic, maybe some roasted red peppers, maybe some chilli flakes for a bit of kick, a bit of freshly ground black pepper even.  And then I decided to just allow Marcella's wisdom to prevail and stick with the recipe (a rare thing for me), and am I ever glad that I did just that.

This sauce consists of nothing more than tomatoes, an onion, a little butter, and a sprinkling of salt - that's it, nothing more.  The onion is simply cut in half and then discarded at the end of the cooking time, rather than diced into the sauce, so it serves to ever so delicately "fragrance" the sauce rather than overpowering it.  The flavour is wonderfully sweet and so intensely "tomatoe-y" that it's almost shocking.  This sauce is as intensely flavoured as any I've ever tasted, and yet it maintains a freshness and purity of flavour that is a sheer delight.  Think of the flavour of a freshly picked tomato, still warm from the sun, sliced thickly and set on top of freshly buttered toast, and you have pretty much exactly that in sauce form.

We enjoyed this tossed through some pappardelle with a sprinkling of freshly grated parmesan.  Marcella also recommends it as being a great accompaniment to gnocchi.  I hope you'll give it a try.  For best results use sun-grown fresh tomatoes, picked at the perfect stage of ripeness - out of season, hot-house grown tomatoes, picked early and ripened in the supermarket chiller, just won't cut it.  Marcella says you can also used tinned tomatoes.

Best Tomato Pasta Sauce Ever Recipe

Adapted from recipe by Marcella Hazan

from Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking

Makes enough for four servings of pasta

Click here for a printable copy of this recipe

1 kg (2x pounds) tomatoes

1x onion

100g (3.5 oz) butter

flaky sea salt

Peel tomatoes and discard the skins.

Remove and discard any woody cores from the tomatoes and roughly chop the flesh.  Cut the onion in half.  Put tomatoes, onion, butter, and a generous pinch of sea salt into a large saucepan.

Simmer uncovered very gently, stirring from time to time, and mashing the tomatoes with a wooden spoon, until the tomatoes have completely broken down and the sauce is reduced and thick - about 45 minutes.

Discard the onion, and immediately toss through pasta, or cool completely and freeze for later use.

I'm sharing this post at See Ya In the Gumbo, hosted by the lovely Michelle at Ms. enPlace;  at Foodie Friday, hosted by Designs by Gollum; and at My Meatless Mondays hosted by Chaya at My Sweet and Savory.