Monday, September 24, 2012

Pasta sauce with eggplant, red capsicum & currants

Here is a twist on the usual Italian style pasta sauce, this one has exotic Persian flavours of eggplant, currants and cumin and is from the book "East to live"by Sue Radd and Dr Kenneth Setchell

Serves 4

2 Tbs extra virgin olive oil
1/2 medium eggplant, cut into strips
1/2 tablespoon ground cumin
2 cloves garlic, crushed
500g bottled tomato pasta sauce
1/4 cup currants
pinch of salt, optional
pinch hot paprika, optional
12 pitted kalamata olives
2 tablespoons coriander, finely chopped

1. Heat the olive oil in a pan and sauté the capsicum until it softens.

2. Add the eggplant strips to the pan and mix with the capsicum. Cover the pan and sauté for about 10 min or until the eggplant strips soften and start turning golden brown.

3. Add the cumin and garlic and fry for 1 min.  Mix in the tomato pasta sauce, currants, pinch of salt, pinch of hot paprika and an extra 1/2 cup of water. Allow the sauce to simmer, half-covered for another 10 minutes, until flavours cook through.

4. Toss in the olives and coriander and serve the sauce piping hot on top of cooked pasta. Both spirali and penne pasta work well.