Beet salad and homemade pappardelle with eggplant ragu and ricotta

For a Sunday dinner, we decided to make our own homemade pappardelle to include as part of an eggplant ragu recipe. Paul got to work making the pasta.

Check out our mixer in "pear." When we got it, Paul's aunts were like, "Pear is the new 'avocado' in appliances!" Is that a 70's reference? I just liked it in green.

There was pasta EVERYWHERE. Paul made me clear my clothes off the
drying rack so we could hang pasta. I am not kidding. 

I started on the eggplant ragu. In the pan are cubed eggplant, red pepper slices, onion, garlic, chili flakes, salt and red wine. I would tone down the salt used in this recipe -- they ask for 1 1/2 teaspoons of Kosher salt, which we used. I am wondering if I put it in at the wrong time because I thought the eggplant became way too salty. I think eggplant soaks up everything, so it may have been better to mix it in differently! 

 

The photos that go along with the recipe look a lot better than mine!

The one cup of red wine did this. It seems extra colorful in comparison with the recipe photos.

I absolutely love beets, and am big into including them in salads. We cook ours by roasting them in the oven at 400 degrees for about 1 hour 15 minutes to 1 hour 30 minutes. I wash them, place them on a small sheet of foil, add a little olive oil, pepper and salt -- and they are good to go! Once they are roasted, they are so easy to peel. Messy, but easy.

Beets are always good for faking a murder scene. Just kidding.

We added the sliced roasted beets to a green salad mix, topped it with some crumbled goat cheese, pepitas, some white wine vinegar and olive oil. 

Yay. Pepitas!

Here is the final result! After the pasta is cooked, you mix in the eggplant ragu so it coats the pasta a little. I forgot to get an orange, so we are missing the "orange zest" piece of the recipe, but the pappardelle is topped with ricotta cheese, a little Parmesan and some chopped parsley.
 

We made the meal complete with a glass of red wine (much of which was drank during the eggplant ragu-ing, and pappardelle-rolling portion of the evening).

We'll do better with the lighting next time.

After adding the ricotta, Parmesan and parsley, the salt was toned down, but I'd still reduce the amount earlier in the recipe. I would also not suggest starting to make your own pasta at 7 p.m. to eat that night. We ended up only making about half the dough into pappardelle, and saved the rest to roll into spaghetti another night that week.