Cross-Cultural Pasta Night

Tonight I was definitely in the mood for pasta. It turned out to be slightly cross-cultural. I used a Japanese eggplant, southern Italian vegetables and pasta, and Greek Mzithra cheese. It’s essentially a riff on a Calabrian pasta dish with eggplant and zucchini and ricotta salata. However, the large eggplant I had in the refrigerator had seen better days, so I had to resort to the long, thin Asian kind, a perfectly good substitute. I rarely buy ricotta salata (too salty for my wife, of course — not to mention made from cow’s milk). However, this dish calls for a little salty sharpness to counterpoint the sweetness of the vegetables and tomato sauce, and I had a small amount of Mzithra, a Greek sheep’s milk cheese which Hank had introduced me to a few years ago. The signature dish for that cheese is Spaghetti and Mzithra in a Brown Butter Sauce. Superb, but beyond the Pale for mostly-vegans. One final note: I decided a side of vegetables would be salubrious, so I boiled some fresh kale from the farmer’s market yesterday, and served it with just olive oil and salt.

cut eggplant into 3/4″ chunks
cut zucchini into 3/4″ pieces
salt zucchini for 1/2 hour, drain and wipe dry
sauté eggplant and a little garlic in olive oil until lightly browned; remove to a bowl
in same pan, sauté zucchini until lightly browned
add eggplant back to pan with zucchini, add salt and pepper, and sauté until almost tender
add 1/4 white wine and boil off
add about 1/2 can of chopped best Italian tomatoes with their juices
simmer until sauce thickens
meanwhile, boil water with salt, add kale, cook until tender
remove kale, return water to high heat
boil penne pasta (125 gm. for me tonight and lunch tomorrow) until al dente
add pasta to the sauce, along with a little of the pasta water
when pasta and sauce have merged, top with grated Mzithra, correct salt and pepper, add olive oil on top
serve with a side of kale
and a few glasses of Chianti