This aubergine ragù is the perfect meal to tide you through the autumnal ebb and flow of October weather, when you want to enjoy the last of the long evenings with a bowl of comfort food and a cosy blanket.
It has deep, rich flavours of tomato, aubergine and optional red wine, and plenty of garlic, underpinned by vegetables like carrots, mushrooms and celery, and lentils, and tied together with thick tagliatelle. Lots of great vitamins and minerals there, and many of these veggies can be locally grown and bought from your farmers markets and greengrocers.
Ragù is traditionally a meat sauce in Italy, so we’re calling this ragu-style so as not to offend someone’s nonna, but if you’re a vegetarian, you might like to enjoy the flavours of the foods beloved by Italians and pasta-lovers the world over, but with a vegetable substitute.
You can absolutely make this with beef as you prefer, but if you want to try a delicious veggie dish, then we highly recommend trying it with baked aubergine to soak in all that flavour.
Top your dish with fresh basil and parmesan or vegetarian hard cheese, and enjoy!
Level: Intermediate
Ingredients (serves 4)
- 2 large aubergines
- Handful of vine ripened tomatoes
- 2 large carrots
- 2 white onions
- 2 celery sticks
- Punnet of mushrooms
- 4 cloves of garlic
- 2 bay leaves
- 400ml pasata
- 200ml red wine (optional)
- 400ml vegetable stock (if using dried lentils)
- 1/4 cup puy lentils
- 200g dried tagliatelle
Method
- Slice up the aubergines and tomatoes, drizzle with oil in a baking tray, and bake at 180°C (fan) for 30 mins.
- Oil a saucepan. Chop up all the veg and pop it in. Simmer on medium heat for 10 mins, then add the pasata.
- Take the aubergine and tomatoes out of the oven, scrape the aubergine flesh out of the skin, and add to the saucepan. Tip in the lentils (and stock if using dried lentils), bay leaves and garlic. Pour in the optional red wine. Simmer for 20 minutes.
- Boil 500ml water in another pot. Once boiled, add a sprinkle of salt, then the tagliatelle. Cook for 10 minutes.
- Take the pasta off the heat, pour a little bit of the pasta water into the ragu sauce, then strain the pasta and add it to the ragu.
- Serve, topping with basil and parmesan or vegetarian hard cheese.
