My cooking is largely a matter of seeing what I have left in the fridge, safe and garden and putting it together one way of another. Here’s what I cooked this evening.
Ingredients
I aubergine, sliced
1 egg
2 or 3 cups of pasta - I’d got farfalle
3 tomatoes - chop them into bits (12 chunks per tomato)
3 kinds of cheese - I’d got Maasdam, which I sliced, grated emmental, and grated parmesan.
1 pot of tomato based chutney (or you could use tomato puree and add spices, or any similar relish that you like)
bread crumbs
olive oil
Equipment
chopping board
good kitchen knife
egg slicer or sharp knife
2 sauce pans (small for eggs, medium for pasta)
1 large frying pan
wooden spoon
spatula
colander
large mixing bowl
side plate - any dinner plate will do
baking dish - I used a 10” circular 2” deep metal baking tin which was just right. I oil the inside of baking tins with coconut oil but for this dish it is probably not essential.
Preheat the oven to about 200 degree centigrade
Preparation
1. First assemble and cut up the ingredients.
2. Hard boil the egg.- 11 minutes - then put on one side to cool
3. Boil the pasta in slightly salted water until al dente - 15-20 minutes - drain through a colander and put into a mixing bowl.
4. Put olive oil in a large frying pan and fry the slices of aubergine, 2 or 3 minutes each side until just starting to brown, flipping them over with the spatula. Don’t use too much oil, just minimum, but don’t let the pan go dry either. You won’t get them all in the pan at once so as they are done put them onto the side plate and add more to the frying pan until all are done. This can be done while the pasta is cooking.
5. Add the whole pot of chutney to the pasta and mix with a wooden spoon.
6. slice the egg thinly - a wire egg slicer is handy
7 now build the dish: put five or six slices of aubergine in the bottom of the baking dish, then an ample layer of the pasta mix, then about half the chopped tomato, then a layer of cheese, a layer of aubergine, more pasta, the rest of the tomato, grated cheese, a layer of egg slices, the rest of the aubergine, the last of the pasta, more grated cheese and bread crumbs. Pour a couple of tablespoons of olive oil over the top and put it in the oven.
8. I cooked it at 200 centigrade in my small, fan-assisted oven for 20-25 minutes when it was starting to brown nicely on the top.
9. Serve hot. A bit of salad goes well with it too.
Now that quantity will feed four adults so I had a very nice dinner - delicious actually - and have some excellent left-overs, so if you’d like to pop over soon we could finish it off.
Afterwards, naturally, home grown strawberries. Eat them while you’ve got them. Life is full of blessings.
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