Hello! Welcome back! Skip all the rambling and scroll right to the bottom of this post for a printer-friendly PDF of the recipe only.
There are a whole lotta eggplant pasta recipes out there. Most, like pasta alla Norma, use tender pieces of eggplant to give the dish a sort of meatiness without the meat. Today’s recipe is nothing like that. There’s eggplant, but there’s also meat, and the aforementioned summer veggie is cooked and blended down to create a pulp that lends lots of creaminess to the dish, without actually adding in any heavy cream (there is a bit of dairy, though).
It actually doesn’t taste like eggplant at all. In fact, if you find yourself thinking, “I don’t like eggplant at all,” then this is the recipe that might just make a convert out of you!
Tell me more
I’ll be the first to admit that this recipe sounds a little… weird. Blended eggplant, sausage, labneh, parmigiano, lemon, Aleppo pepper, white wine — it’s a hodgepodge. But sometimes, my best recipes are (celery + avocado Caesar slaw over chicken cutlets, anyone?). And trust me when I say that all these ingredients come together to create a creamy-dreamy pasta that’s decadent without being heavy. It’s lush! It’s bright! It’s tangy! It’s meaty! It’s honestly kinda sexy. Perfect date night cooking.
Before we start
I used sweet Italian sausage in the hopes that my daughter would eat this. She did!! Until the Aleppo pepper kicked in and she deemed it too spicy. You can sub in spicy Italian sausage to make it more spicy or up the Aleppo pepper. Lamb sausage would also be absolutely divineeee here. (Or skip the Aleppo to make it not spicy at all!).
Use whatever pasta you want. Short, long — doesn’t matter so much here IMO. I just love bucatini.
Aleppo pepper is a smoky-sweet-spicy dried pepper that I just love. It originally hails from Aleppo, Syria. Find it on Amazon or at your local Middle Eastern grocer.
You know I’m also obsessed with labneh, so no surprise it found its way into this recipe. If you can’t find any, you can use Greek yog or even sour cream instead. Both will give you the tang and the creaminess.
The recipe
Serves: 4
Cook time: 1 hour 30 minutes (30 minutes active cook time)
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