Eggplant Sauce with Bell Pepper, Tomato, and Basil

When employed to make a pasta sauce, eggplant is a vegetable that can spring surprises, not all of them invariably agreeable. The flavor can swing from bitterness to cloying blandness. Ivo, the owner-cook of the small restaurant in Venice that bears his name, makes an eggplant sauce that has never wearied or disappointed me. It is authoritatively fragrant and spicy, yet it always delivers a good measure of that lively sweetness that is eggplant’s most winning feature. If you are acquainted