Name: Pasta in basil oil with aubergines, broad beans, red onions and chillies
Yield: For four
Ingredients: 1 small aubergine; a little olive oil; 2 handfuls of broad beans; 450 g pasta, any shape, fresh or dried; 120 mls basil oil; ½ tsp salt; 1 tomato, deseeded, halved and sliced; 2 large fresh chillies, thinly sliced or 8 chopped dried ‘bird’s eye’; 4 cloves garlic, sliced; 2 small red onions, sliced in thinnish half-rounds

Preparation info

For
four

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

The Café Paradiso Cookbook

By Denis Cotter

Published 1999

About

There has been one version or another of this dish on Paradiso menus for most of the restaurant’s life. It is, I think, a kind of pre-planned ‘pasta with whatever’s in the fridge’ dish. At one time or another, just about every vegetable in the store has had a night out with the basil oil and some pasta. This recipe is one of my own favourite combinations. I think I could eat pasta with aubergines, chillies and olive oil for the rest of my life and you’d hardly hear so much as a whimper of a