Last Night's Dinner 2

A caponata/minestrone mash up

First a quick note about these Last Night’s Dinner posts. These are going to be a feature from now on, at least a couple of times a week while my recipe development load is a little lighter, and will supplement the longer posts and the book review posts. They are going to be paid posts from the method onwards (so you get all the preamble and the ingredient lists). If this encourages you in anyway to become a paid subscriber (thank you, if so!), don’t forget there is a 25% discount until the middle of the month.

I have just written a really long essay on my food shopping routines, which seemed a bit like overkill when it ended with me talking about how aubergines are 3 for £1.80 in Lidl right now, which makes them 60p to everyone else’s 95p. So I have shelved it for the time being, but if you would like to read it, tell me and it shall appear (don’t all shout at once!)

Anyway I bought a load of the aubergines and I am today making a melanzane parmigiana for dinner as it is my absolute favourite thing and also how I judge Italian restaurants. And as a very brief aside, talking about restaurants, I have visited Chiswick’s Napoli On the Road twice in the last few weeks, and last time Shariq ordered their melanzane parmigiana pizza which was unexpected and absolutely superb - and I was annoyed I hadn’t ordered it myself. Next time.

Re the melanzane parmigiana - I will of course pressure cook the tomato sauce - I realise I haven’t put a recipe for this on my Substack yet, which I will, soon. But I don’t pressure cook the aubergines (I have been asked to develop a method for this, but it doesn’t quite work). You can bake the assembled dish in the pressure cooker if you like - it can work at a pinch in the base, but is better in a dish on a trivet - but you will need to grill it afterwards.

My preferred method to cook the aubergines before assemblage is to slice into rounds, brush with oil and roast in the oven. You use up much less oil that way, good because the finished dish is less oily (I don’t much like the orange slick you usually get, just too much for me) and also, since olive oil prices have sky rocketed, a bit cheaper too. Yes, you are putting the oven on, but for much less time than it takes to fry all those aubergine slices in a frying pan. And it is much, much easier too. Do I salt them? Yes. This is not for bitterness but because I want to reduce their water content a little - the reason being if I am doing several trays at once in the oven, they can start steaming instead of browning if they have a high water content.

Last night I wanted something soupy, and Adam wanted something pasta. I wanted to use at least one aubergine and also was craving the sharpness of capers and lemons. So I made this. It ended up like a caponata flavoured minestrone. If I had had some kale or other greens, I would have added them too - but not courgettes because I just can’t eat aubergines and courgettes together, I think it stems from being force fed rubbish ratatouille when I was young. But of course, you don’t need to be bound by that, add whatever you like.

You will notice that the pasta cooking time is shorter than when I use the absorption method for pasta - pasta cooks faster in more liquid. The same applies to all the other grains too.

Ingredients:

2 tbsp olive oil

50g bacon/pancetta/whatever, cut into lardons (optional, I put this in because Adam pestered)

1 onion, sliced

2 sticks celery, sliced

1 large carrot, sliced

1 large aubergine, diced

3 garlic cloves

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp chilli flakes

1/2 tsp dried thyme, oregano or mixed herbs

A small bunch of parsley, stems and leaves separated and finely chopped

200g tomatoes, fresh or tinned, pureed

200g cooked cannellini or borlotti beans

600ml chicken stock (or vegetable stock or water)

75g spaghetti, broken up, or any small/soup pasta you like

1 tbsp red wine vinegar

2 tbsp capers, drained

2 tbsp green olives (I use the ones stuffed with anchovies for extra savoury), sliced

A squeeze of lemon juice

A rasp of lemon zest

Herbs (parsley, mint, basil) and parmesan to serve