This is another good recipe in which to hide some zucchini.  I came back from the market today with a craving for pasta and dying to try out Angela Russo‘s tomato sauce.  I had half of a huge zucchini sitting in the fridge, and the bounty from today’s market. I started out by slicing an entire small garlic head, fresh from the market, and sauteeing it in olive oil. Once it started to golden, I added roughly two cups of grated zucchini, 1 cup grated carrots (1 small yellow carrot, and a small purple carrot), and put a lid on the pan while I chopped some leftover roasted eggplant. After the zucchini & carrot mixture had cooked for about 5 minutes, I added the tomato sauce (abou 2 cups), eggplant, and one can of navy beans. I let it simmer for a few minutes and tried some to judge how much salt & pepper I’d need to add. To my surprise, the sauce was just SO flavourful I didn’t need to add any salt. I added a 1/4 cup chopped basil & flat leaf parsley and served it on pasta. I used gemelli pasta but I bet it would be great with fussili or penne too.

This is what the sauce looked like:

It could be served on top of rice or any other grain or served with bread.

Cast iron pans are the ideal non-stick cookware. They don’t contain nasty chemicals, you don’t have to worry about scraping them, and as long as they are well seasoned and well taken care of, they’ll last for many many years and only get better with use. My objective is to replace all of my teflon pans. Luckily I only have three.

I’ve been using the 10″ skillet above nearly every day for the past few weeks and I have to say I love it more each day. It’s amazing for cornbread and I’ve used it to roast potatoes and other vegetables in the oven, do simple stir fries, and anything else I can cook in a skillet. The large grill has seen less use.  It’s quite large so I don’t really use it if all I need to grill is a couple bean burgers. I’ll use the skillet for that. But this week I found the ultimate use for it. Roasting vegetables in the oven.

I sliced two eggplants and a zucchini, tossed them in olive oil, oregano, salt & pepper and placed them on the grill and put it in the oven at 400F. I flipped them half way through. This is the result:

This makes amazingly versatile meals starters. I used the grilled eggplants on my steelcut oats in the morning and have also had them for dinner with angel hair pasta:

And mixed it with some leftover quinoa & tomatoes to make a wonderful lunch salad: