Spaghetti with grilled vegetables

During the last Argilla (a great ceramic fair in Faenza) I literally fell in love with these beautiful dishes. They are also very cunning for children and for my foreign friends, who find difficult to roll long pasta on the fork. (of course I am breaking my pasta!) No spoon is needed and no fuss, just elegance and good manners.

I thought that the very best way to use them for the first time was to prepare this colourful spaghetti recipe, very light and very tasty, with lots of healthy grilled vegetables. It takes quite a bit to grill the vegetable but you can do it in advance and cook the spaghetti at the very last minute.

You can use any type of grilling methods. I used the most basic grill, but just now I realise that I could do in half the time using my electric one!

Ingredients for 4

3 marrows

3 eggplants

4 red tomatoes

2 yellow sweet peppers

400 grs/ 0.88 lb spaghetti

4 cloves garlic

6 spoons extra virgin olive oil (evoo)
Salt

4-6 basil leaves

How to:

  1) Wash, clean and slice the marrows and eggplants: 1 eggplant and 1 marrow should be cut into round slices, while the other 2 of them should be cut into thin stripes.

   

2) Wash and slice the sweet peppers in long stripes

     

      3) Grill all the above mentioned vegetables: the marrows and the sweet peppers should remain crunchy; season all with salt and sprinkle with extra virgin olive oil in order not to let them dry too much.

 

4) For the sauce, in a large pan warm up 4-6 table spoons evoo and add the garlic cloves, let it cook until golden. In a food processor, process the basil leaves with 1 teaspoon olive oil.

     5) In the meanwhile wash the tomatoes, cut into pieces, salt them and put them in a colander to make them loose part of their water.

   

6) Pour the tomatoes in the pan with the garlic and let it cook for 5-7 minutes to taste. Adjust salt. Add the round slices of vegetables to the sauce and the processed basil leaves.

7) Decorate the side of your dishes with the stripes of grilled vegetables.

8) Cook your spaghetti in a large pan of salted running water (10 grs salt each/liter) and drain them well in a colander. Always remember to follow the cooking time on the packaging! 

9) Pour the pasta in the pan and let them saute for few seconds, stirring well until they absorb part of the sauce.

10)  I used a ring to better display the spaghetti, but obviously they will not keep the shape! Garnish with fresh basil leaves.

11)  Serve immediately with a glass of cold dry white wine.

Intrigued by these beautiful red dishes? Contact me! italy.food.and@gmail.com