hey everyone welcome to Pai's kitchen and if you're new to Pai's kitchen this is sort of like a sister
show to hot thai kitchen where i can share with you all the delicious things that are not a part
of thai cuisine and so the recipe i'm sharing with you today when i first made it i hadn't
planned for it to be on the show but when i was done with it i thought this is great i need to
share it with you guys it's one of those dishes that have very few ingredients very simple prep
but it is so so delicious so it's perfect for you know like a Wednesday night you're kind of
tired you don't want to wait two hours for dinner but you still want good food this is
it so it's a pasta dish with roasted eggplant and a garlicky tomatoey sauce also good and
because I am making it it's also going to be a little bit spicy but that's optional so let's
get started all right let's take a look at the ingredients I've got some dried chilies you can
also just use chili flakes it just happens to be what I have a ton of garlic finely chopped
and this is a garlicky sauce of your garlic lover yay some chopped tomatoes now this is
roma tomatoes and roma tomatoes are perfect for pasta sauce because it doesn't have a lot
of juice not a lot of water so it's flavorful and you don't have to cook it for so long to
evaporate all that liquid now this looks like a lot of tomatoes but one of the reasons I came up
with this dish was I wanted tomato sauce but I didn't want to wait to simmer it for like half
an hour however long it normally takes to make actual tomato sauce so this is sort of my hack
to make a quick tomato pasta okay I've got some linguine you can use whatever kind of pasta you
want one trick is choose pasta that's got a matte surface it creates a rough surface and it holds
on to sauce better eggplant now if you don't like eggplant you don't have to add eggplant
it won't really affect that as you can do zucchini whatever kind of vegetables you like roasted okay
as an option I love this dish vegetarian but if you want you can also add some Italian sausage
this is Italian sausage that I've taken out of the casing so it's great if you want something
a little stronger flavor you know something with extra protein finally some basil now I've got a
is a planned here and what I love about this I bought this at the grocery store and they were
selling these for $2.99 which is the same price as the back of Kutch basil so why wouldn't I get this
one the amount was about the same and this will last a long time it's fresher like this one I've
had for at least three weeks but it still looks good it's still fresh it's so much more worth
it I'm going to start by roasting the eggplant a little bit of olive oil and salt and pepper that's
it give this a quick toss just to mix everything together and the eggplant will really just soak
up all that oil so don't worry about like oh my oh that's all gone and then it just goes in
the oven you don't have to worry about it for the next 10 minutes 425 degree Fahrenheit by the way
so this is only if you are using the Italian sausage or any other kind of protein I'm going
to cook the sausage separately and I do that because the sausage is going to give off a lot
of fat and really strong flavor and I kind of like to keep my pasta flavor clean rather than
it tasting like Italian sausage all over break it into little chunks I don't want it to like
end up looking like ground meat rikes I want nice chewiness in them and that is it now we are ready
to put it all together yes so I'm using a wok to cook a pasta dish because I'm much preferred you
can stir to your heart's content and nothing is going to jump out on you so the way I timed this
dish is as soon as I'm ready to put everything together I drop my pasta just before I start the
sauce okay so then the pasta doesn't have to sit and wait for me okay so I've got a pot of water
back there make sure you salt your pasta water about one teaspoon of salt to a liter of water
okay so I always set the timer one minute less than what the package says to do because I want
the last minute of cooking to happen in the pan it'll help the pasta absorb the sauce better in
my wok here I'm going to just put the heat quite low and I've got some olive oil going in and all
of the garlic yes yes that's a lot of garlic that's why it's so good and also the chilies
and what I want to do at this point is for the garlic to slowly infuse itself into the olive
oil and for it to soften so it sort of becomes a part of the sauce you know so now the garlic is
nice and soft and I can really smell garlic in the air I'm going to crank the heat now and as
soon as I do that I add my tomatoes because what I want now is for the tomatoes to cook down for
the water to evaporate okay a good pinch of salt my pepper and just let it cook down this is why
I like a walk to you've got a large surface area water can evaporate really quickly while that's
going I'm going to bring over my eggplant and see I'll just show you quickly what the eggplant looks
like nice and brown along the edges so if you can if you have convection oven use convection
that happens a lot quicker okay so what you're looking for here is for the tomatoes to start
to loose their integrity once it starts to look mushy I'm going to add the eggplant right away
because I don't want it to become a complete mush I like that chunks of tomato give that a toss and
then I'm going to add my sausage if using again I've done this vegetarian and it was absolutely
delicious so don't feel like you have to add the sausage and I'm being careful not to add
any of the oil from the sausage and that's it I'm going to turn this off because now the next
thing to go in is my pasta in my pasta has just two more minutes on it see the timing works out
really well when your Wednesday night you want to maximize your time all right so I am going to put
the pasta directly into the pot I'm not going to drain it because I actually want to keep the
pasta water and then you don't need to wash a colander just about a half a cup of pasta water
and the pasta water has some starch that's left the pasta and it's going to help bind the pasta
and the sauce together - oh yes oh and that's another thing because you're going to add pasta
water which is salted you don't want to make the sauce too salty to begin with okay so I seasoned
it to make sure it's salty but it's on the mild side that looks fantastic and that's it how easy
is that very nice now yes I know I haven't put the basil in and there's a reason for that because I
find that basil turns black really quickly when it's hot so I learned this from a local Italian
restaurant actually they just put the basil on top at the end before they serve it so when it gets
to the table it's so nice and fresh and you as a diner can mix it all in so pretty that just makes
a fresh Oh spinach if you want to do eggplant put some spinach in there that'll be really pretty as
well and of course seeing as we are making a version of Italian food we're going to add
some parmesan note it down a Parmesan cheese nice shaving with a microplane very nice whoo all right
eggplant some Tomatoes some basil you've got to compose the perfect bite oh it hits all
the right spot I'll bend their pasta such a satisfying true tomato a super garlic in that
eggplant you know eggplant just becomes tender and juicy once you start chewing on them are so
perfect and it's got a kick that is a spicy pasta Oh so I hope you give this a try the
recipe will be on hot Thai Kitchen calm and when you make it send me a photo on Facebook Twitter
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like this and I will see you next time for your next submission adventure when I first made it
I hadn't actually planned on it being on the ship planned for it to be planned on it being
a mission no I hadn't planned to put everything I hadn't planned on it to be able to be for the
honest place no I had my plan to be on the show I hadn't planned for it to be on the show okay