Back in the Big Smoke

And a recipe for GORGEOUS tomato and aubergine pasta

Willkommen, bienvenue; I’ve decided to shift this little blog from Blogspot (which I found very confusing) to Substack by way of an excellent suggestion from Sonia. So thank you for that, and welcome!

I just touched down in London Town, to quote Kanye, and not to sound cliche but it does feel quite bizarre to be back. First things I noticed: I’m really not used to being around mostly English accents, and also holy shit London is dirty. Every green space that we drove past on the coach from Stansted to Finchley Road was covered in litter- I know I need to get myself back into that Londoner mindset but it’s been a while, four years to be precise, since I was here for the long haul so it’s going to take a bit of getting used to.

Now I could go on a rant about Tory underfunding and the cuts to public services and the neglect of our communities but that would almost certainly dampen my mood on this fine Saturday morning, so instead I’ll give you an incredible pasta recipe that Sonia and I made in France last week (really this is just an excuse to reminisce).

So here we are: sausage and aubergine pasta.

This was a pretty impromptu recipe, so I’ll do my best to remember what went into it (other than a whole lotta love).

Little bit of olive oil- a la Marco Pierre White, if you will

4 small onions (or 2 or 3 medium/ large- you get the gist)

6 cloves of garlic (or however much you want. Actually you know what, use your senses here, adapt at your own free will. I’ll just write what I used)

1 medium aubergine

6 chipolata sausages

Big ol’ glug of red wine

Big ol’ glug of balsamic vinegar

Maybe eight large tomatoes? Or two tins, but fresh tomatoes were fab

Herbes de provence

Salt and pepper

Cayenne pepper

Tablespoon of tomato paste

One ball of fresh Mozarella

Average bag of pasta

Start by slicing up some onions and, in a big pasta-sauce sized pot, sauteing them in olive oil until they’re translucent and starting to caramalise. Add a few cloves of garlic and continue to cook for a few minutes.

At the same time, de-skin the sausages, cut them into little pieces and, in a separate frying pan, fry up the sausage meat in more garlic and olive oil until it’s cooked and starting to brown on the outside.

When the onions and sausages are both cooked, transfer the sausage meat to a bowl and the onions to the sausage pan, and continue to cook the onions with a glug of red wine to create a slightly saucey, red winey, sausagey glaze.

While the onions are cooking in the wine, cut the aubergine into small cubes and fry, with another glug of olive oil, in the pot originally used for the onions. Aubergine can be tricky, so keep the heat low, top up the oil as needed, salt generously, and keep watch. This recipe does require a fair bit of juggling, so it’s a good one to make when you’ve got an extra hand in the kitchen.

Turn off the onions once the sauce has thickened a bit so you’ve got one less thing to worry about, and if you’re using fresh tomatoes, get to blanching.

To do this, put a pan of water on the boil and cut Xs into the sides of the tomatoes- two in each usually does the trick. Boil the tomatoes for about 45 seconds, then fish them out, peel of the skin and cut out the tops (where the stalks would have been).

Once the aubergine is soft and almost translucent, put the saucy onions back in with them. Now for either the fun part or the dreaded part, depending on how you look at it: take the peeled tomatoes and crush them with your hands into the pot. You can probably do this another way, but for me it was easiest and required the least washing up. And if you’re using tins, ignore all this and just add them straight.

Add another glug of wine, a big glug of balsam, lots of herbes de provence, a bit of cayenne pepper, a tablespoon of tomato paste, a teaspoon of sugar, and salt and pepper to taste. It should be quite liquidy at this point, so let it cook down for about 10 minutes before putting the pasta on to boil.

Boil the pasta as per its instructions, and about two minutes before it’s done chop up a ball of mozzarella and stir it into the sauce.

If needed, add some pasta water into the sauce to loosen it up a bit. If not, drain the pasta, stir it into the sauce, serve up, top with a bit of parmesan and basil, and voila!

This recipe lasted us two dinners and a lot of grazing, and was absolutely divine. I still dream about her.

À bientôt!