Dieting can be stressful for so many reasons. We have to plan our food intake, count calories, make menus on calenders and basically map out our hunger. We wind up squirreling away in the back of the pantry everything we shouldn’t eat. It can make every meal a challenge. “Out of sight, out of mind,” we tell ourselves as we shield our eyes and hearts from cookies, chips, muffins, chocolate bars and even pasta. Is it even possible to go without these treats?
For us, it’s not possible. Despite our strict diet, we can’t deprive ourselves of a nice plate of spaghetti with tomato sauce, perhaps sprinkled with some fresh basil. And since indulging like that every day could thwart all our efforts to date, we came up with a lite idea: eggplant pasta.
Like thick spaghetti
Swapping eggplant for pasta, we decided to slice it and treat it like oversized noodles. To do this, start by cutting up the eggplants in thin vertical slices, then slicing them into thin strips.
These strips should then be put in a colander, sprinkled with salt and left to drain.
How to cook eggplant “pasta”
Once the eggplant strips have given up their moisture, they are ready to be cooked. If you are tempted to boil them like regular pasta, don’t. They will absorb too much water and swell up like sponges. A much better approach is sautéing them in a pan for a few minutes with just a hint of oil and a pinch of salt. Remove the eggplant from the stove before it starts to turn golden and select your favorite toppings.
A few ideas
To keep our diets on track, we recommend fresh, lite ingredients that won’t weigh down this slimming dish. We opted for cherry tomatoes and king prawn tails, but feel free to get creative. Eggplant spaghetti is good served simply with olives, capers and cherry tomatoes, but it can also be topped with fresh vegetables, anchovies and shavings of pecorino cheese.
Alternatives
This is such a nice technique that we can’t stop at eggplant. Try making delightfully summery vegetable spaghetti from zucchini, carrots and beets. Any of these would be delicious topped simply with garlic, olive oil and a dash of chili pepper.