Spaghetti Melanzane Bolognese (Vegetariano)

Pasta! Who doesn't like pasta. Show me a person who doesn't like pasta. Come on, bring them out. I won't do anything to them. Ok, let's talk about something else.

Last night I made spaghetti with tomato sauce, and I thought it turned out well enough to be worth remembering. And it all started with an eggplant...

I always buy too much eggplant. They look so weird, and you think they'll shrink when you cook them, and above all they don't weigh much so they always trick me into thinking they don't have much substance. So I bought two. Maybe next I'll post what I did with the other one.

First I just sauteed the eggplant by itself. I added a bit of oil, but I don't think it was necessary. After stirring and cooking on medium heat for a little while, the water will come out. One danger with eggplant is not cooking it enough, in which case it can be gross if not painful. With the fat European kind, if it hasn't been roasted to smithereens, it feels like needles are pricking my tongue when I eat it. Does anyone else have that?

Once the eggplant was well-cooked, I added more olive oil, a few cloves of chopped garlic, and some chili flakes. I stirred this for another minute, then added half a can of crushed tomato. Then I chopped a bit of field roast (celebration roast!), and added that along with a small splash of leftover red wine and a pinch of Herbes de Provence, and some salt. I think it's easy to make tomato sauce too sour, or too sweet, or too bland, or too salty, so I also recommend tasting it after each step to avoid any grave blunders.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention, meanwhile I boiled the spaghetti. This time I was very diligent about the pasta, because I was hungry and because the sauce was done first, so I kept tasting pieces of it. This turned out to be an excellent behavior, because I knew as soon as it was cooked just enough. And what a difference that made! Pasta cooked just right is like a whole different animal (if pasta were an animal). The sauce almost doesn't matter.

But the sauce does matter. Don't let anyone tell you different, sauce. When the pasta was done and strained I added the chopped basil to the sauce, and turned off the burner right away. Then I served it as shown, with some more of that aged goat cheese (it tastes a lot like sharp cheddar) on top, and some olives. 

A note about the olives -- other times I've chopped them and added them directly to the tomato sauce, but last time I did this the sauce came out way too sour. Any idea why? I didn't even add that many olives. 

One other thing I discovered: orange juice tastes good with gin. Not mixed together, just side by side.