Black & White Eggplant Pasta

First, I want to apologize for not being a very good blogger…I think the summer heat is getting to me and I just can’t get the motivation together to cook anything! But last night I did have a watermelon-feta-arugula salad that was pretty yum! (no pics, it was late.)

I have a lot of eggplants in my fridge and so tonight I decided to use a good portion of it in this recipe: Black and White Eggplant Pasta.*

The name of eggplant was given it by Europeans in the middle of the eighteenth century because the variety they knew had fruits that were the shape and size of goose eggs. That variety also had fruits that are a whitish or yellowish colour rather than the wine purple that is more familiar to us nowadays. So the sort they knew really did look as though it had fruits like eggs.

-Michael Quinion

The interesting thing is when white eggplant is cooked the skin turns brown, so the final dish of course didn’t look at all B&W–don’t be fooled! ;p

*I didn’t have any basil leaves (don’t ask) so I used mint leaves and I put a little tomato sauce in there since I only used 3 ripe tomatoes. I also used crushed red pepper in place of the hot sauce and cayenne pepper.

Eggplants are one of my favorite vegetables and they always make me think of this song Rick likes to play for me (I’m his eggplant girl afterall).

Eggplant
Michael Franks
From: The Art of Tea

Whenever I explore the land of Yen
I always take one on the chin
And now this lioness has almost made me tame.
I can’t pronounce her name but
Eggplant is her game.

The lady sticks to me like white on rice.
She never cooks the same way twice.
Maybe it’s the mushrooms. Maybe the tomatoes.
I can’t reveal her name but Eggplant is her game.

When my baby cooks her Eggplant,
She don’t read no book.
She’s got a Giocanda kinda of dirty look

And my baby cooks her Eggplant,
Bout 19 different ways.
Sometimes I just have it raw with Mayonnaise.

-break-

Maybe its the way she grates her cheese,
Or just the freckles on her knees.
Maybe its the scallions. Maybe she’s Italian.
I can’t reveal her name but Eggplant is her game.

When my baby cooks her Eggplant,
She don’t read no book.
She’s got a Giocanda kinda of dirty look.

And my baby cooks her Eggplant,
Bout 19 different ways.
Sometimes I just have it raw with Mayonnaise.