Barbecuing your vegetables before making a pasta sauce is a brilliant way to add flavour.
Ingredients
Serves: 4
Time: 45 minutes
- 2 aubergines, chopped into rough chunks
- 2 courgette, sliced into strips
- 1 bulb garlic
- 1 onion, finely diced
- 2 tbsps olive oil
- 500 ml passata
- 350 grams dried tagliatelle pasta
- Handful of flat leaf parsley, roughly chopped
- 80 grams parmesan, finely grated plus more to garnish
- Sea salt
- Freshly ground black pepper
Method
- Light your BBQ - setting up so that you have a direct and indirect side.
- Wrap your garlic in tinfoil and place on the direct side of the grill.
- Thread the chopped aubergine and courgette onto metal skewers (or wooden skewers that have been soaked in water) and season with salt and pepper. Also place over the direct side of your BBQ.
- Turn the vegetables occasionally and when they are charred and tender (about 12-15 minutes) remove from the BBQ and set aside. Remove the garlic from the coals after about 30 minutes.
- To make your pasta sauce, heat the olive oil in a large pot and add the diced onion. Cook for 10 minutes until softened and tender then squeeze in the garlic from the garlic bulb. Stir, cooking out for a few minutes then add the passata to the pot. Season well with salt and pepper and let everything bubble and reduce for about 30 minutes.
- After 30 minutes add in most of the chopped parsley and parmesan to the sauce, reserving some for garnish. Stir into the sauce, check the seasoning and keep the sauce warm.
- Place a large pot of heavily salted boiling water over a high heat and bring to the boil. Cook the pasta according to the packet instructions. Drain, reserving a little pasta cooking liquid.
- Turn the heat back on underneath your sauce and gently add the pasta, and a little pasta water to the sauce, mix to coat the pasta with sauce, adding more pasta water as needed if the sauce is too thick.
- Serve the pasta in bowls topped with the charred vegetables and the reserved parsley and parmesan.
