Last night I made dinner and got to try our Parpardelle’s pasta that we bought at the farmer’s market last weekend.  We cooked up some of the sweet red onion linguine and paired it with some roasted vegetables and cilantro pesto.  This is not exactly a seasonal recipe right now, but eggplant, summer squash, and cilantro were on sale at Sunflower Markets and I decided to try this.  When I was in Florida visiting my sister Amy a few weeks back, we bought some cilantro pesto from a booth there and I was really surprised by how good it was.  Last summer I made roasted vegetables on top of pasta many times, but usually just paired it with spaghetti sauce.  Last night I tried making some cilantro pesto myself instead of using spaghetti sauce this time.  The dish really turned out tasty, and we were pleasantly surprised by how good the sweet red onion linguine was as well.  I have to say, I couldn’t really taste the sweet red onion in the linguine, but it was great pasta none-the-less.

Roasted Vegetables

1 pint of cherry tomatoes

1 eggplant (salted – find instructions here)

2 summer squash (cut into half inch think slices)

1 onion (cut into large chunks)

3 garlic cloves (sliced)

several tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

NOTE: You could substitute other vegetables as well, zucchini or bell peppers, for example, both work well in this recipe.

Heat oven to 420°F .  In a large casserole dish drizzle a tablespoon or two of olive oil.  Add cherry tomatoes, summer squash, onion, and garlic to the dish and salt and pepper to your liking.  Then add the eggplant – which will already taste salty – and drizzle all the ingredients with a little more olive oil and mix them around so they are coated.  Put casserole dish in the oven and bake for around 45 minutes or until vegetables are cooked through and slightly browning.

Cilantro Pesto

1 bunch of cilantro (washed and stems cut off)

2 tblsp pinenuts

1/3 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese

3 cloves of garlic

3 tblsp olive oil

Put cilantro, pinenuts, parmesan cheese, and garlic into a food processor and blend adding the olive oil a little at a time.

To serve over the vegetables and pasta, I added a couple of tablespoons or so of water to thin out the pesto and turn it into more of a sauce, then poured over both.

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