http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/07/dining/pasta-recipe-eggplant-tomatoes.html 2016-09-05 09:49:41 Eggplant, Tomatoes and Just a Bit of Pasta Roasted eggplant and simmered heirloom tomatoes make for a vegetable-rich pasta dish. === Pasta is a generous co-star. There are some dishes where it takes center stage, minimally coated with a sauce designed to bring out its wheaty excellence. But just as often, pasta is content to play a supporting role. And in this summery dish, the spotlight is definitely on the vegetables. The recipe began with the giant globe eggplant in my fridge. I reasoned that if I cubed the eggplant, oiled it and roasted it to caramelized tenderness, I could use the half-hour it needed in the oven to figure out what came next. It’s eggplant season, so naturally I also had a pile of heirloom tomatoes weeping on my counter. They were so ripe and juicy, I knew they’d defy any knife’s attempt to cube them. Instead, I rubbed them over the holes of a box grater, letting the flesh fall into a purée. It’s a technique I use often in tomato season when I have luscious but overripe tomatoes. ( Simmering down the tomato pulp with a little olive oil, garlic and chile is a fast and easy way to make a very fresh tomato sauce. If you cook it down a lot, it becomes intense and thick, like a Or if you just simmer it briefly to concentrate the sweetness, it’s lovely on pasta, which is what I decided to do. After all, pasta with tomato and eggplant, in myriad manifestations, is one of the glories of summer cooking. Sauce on the stove, eggplant in the oven, all I needed to do to finish the meal was boil up some pasta and combine everything. Then to season the dish, I added capers for a salty bite, herbs for brightness, a bit of butter for richness and some grated cheese to round it all out. The resulting dish was velvety from the eggplant, sweet from the tomato sauce, tangy with capers and cheese, and fresh from the herbs. And the mellow, toothsome pasta was there to anchor it all, playing a crucial supporting role to the vegetables — which, in summer, will always be the stars. Recipe: