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| Wholewheat spaghetti in pesto with aubergines and sunflower seeds |
Remember the pesto that I’d made couple of days back with fresh basil leaves, garlic, toasted walnuts, salt and extra virgin olive oil? The one I spoke about in the boiled egg whites post?
Well, I used some of the pesto the next day to make an aubergine/ eggplant/ baigan wholewheat pesto spaghetti. From what I understand, aubergines is a vegetable that is occasionally added to pastas in Italy. In the southern Mediterranean region I guess.
This is how I made it. The pictures below are from my Instagram stories. I hope you do follow me at @thefinelychopped If you do, you will know that this post first appeared there.
I sauteed some sliced aubergines in olive oil with crushed pepper in a pan first.
Then added the wholewheat pasta which our cook Banu had just boiled for me and thus saved me a bit of effort in the kitchen. I am down with a bad back after all.
Then I added a tablespoon of the water in which the pasta had been boiled to the spaghetti, turned off the gas and added the pesto, and blended it all in with a fork.
Turning off the gas and then adding in the pesto is a trick that I learnt from my friend, Matteo Arvonio, who is Italian and a great chef. He had shown me this when he was at the Mezzo Mezzo at the JW Marrott, Juhu.
I sprinkled some sunflower seeds on top at the end. The pasta remained hot even after I sat down to eat post taking pictures.
The pesto has no Parmesan and pine nuts in it, but I am sure Matteo wouldn’t mind that. He is someone who understands flavours well and believes in building on them. He is married to my classmate from college, a Bengali.
That’s an unrelated piece of trivia. Or maybe not!
Here’s a video of Matteo showing me how to make a rocket pesto:
