According to a recent Almanac.com article by Doreen G. Howard, we should all be gearing up for Aug. 8: National Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor’s Porch Day.
And, apparently, someone who knows all of us at the newspaper office love fresh vegetables was celebrating early. We recently found a large box of delicious garden-grown goodies, with no hint of who left it, sitting in front of our office door.
As a non-gardener myself, I was especially happy to share in the bounty, which included some gorgeous eggplants, along with some gigantic zucchini.
So, if you find yourself a recipient of someone else’s hard work or are a gardener yourself, I wanted to give you a new recipe to try with those summer veggies, and as a bonus, not only does this not require using your oven, it also only uses one pot. Win-win.
This comes from the blog “The Busy Foodie.” You can find the original post at https://thebusyfoodie.com/sausage-and-eggplant-pasta. I doubled the recipe to make using up ingredients a bit simpler. I also added extra garlic in my version.
One Pot Sausage and Eggplant Pasta
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 pound sweet Italian sausage casings removed
- 10 to 12 cloves garlic minced
- 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
- 1 large zucchini diced
- 1 large eggplant peeled and diced
- 16 ounces bowtie pasta
- 5 cups hot water
- 6 ounces fresh baby spinach
- 8 ounces parmesan freshly grated
- salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Heat the olive oil in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat.
- Once the oil is hot, add in the sausage, breaking it apart as it browns. Once it is cooked through, toss in the garlic and red pepper flakes. Saute for just a couple of minutes before adding the zucchini and eggplant.
- Stir regularly until the veggies are soft, and add in the pasta, along with the hot water. Stir to combine all the ingredients, and turn the heat to high. Once the water boils, turn the heat back to medium-high, keeping the mixture at a simmer. Stir regularly to keep the pasta from sticking, letting it cook for 10 to 12 minutes or until the pasta is cooked through and most of the water is gone from the pot.
- Once the pasta is done, stir in the spinach and parmesan. Stir until the cheese is melted and everything is well combined. Stir in salt and pepper, and serve hot.
This was really nice. It had the saltiness of the parmesan, the freshness of all the vegetables and the little zings of spice from the sausage.
It was a simple meal, perfect for lunch, and it made plenty more for us to put in the fridge for leftovers later in the week.
I’d like to say a thank you to our mystery gardener, who blessed us with the fruits of their labor, but I also implore the rest of our readers: please don’t all of you go dropping zucchini in front of our office door on Aug. 8. There’s way more of you than there are of us.
This piece first appeared in print on July 18, 2024.
Spice Up Your Life is a weekly newspaper column written by Lindsey Young in south central Kansas. If you are interested in sponsoring this column, please contact us through the “Contact Lindsey” link at the top of the page.
