Pasta sauces can be made from many vegetables and comes in a rainbow of colours. The red tomato based and white cream based sauces are the most popular pasta sauces. You also have the green pesto sauces and I'm sure you have seen the black squid ink pasta that has a purple black hue. Today though I'm making a homemade pasta  sauce recipe made from eggplants and capsicum.

This easy pasta sauce recipe is heavier than the tomato based sauces because of the eggplant and it has a rich roasted vegetable flavour as both the eggplant and capsicum are grilled before blending. Eggplant should be classified as a superfood if it hasn't been already. To find out more about the nutritional benefits of eggplant, check out the 27 Science-Backed Health Benefits of Eggplant article on the well-beingsecrets.com blog.

I prefer using the larger round eggplants in this healthy pasta sauce recipe instead of the long thin ones. You do need quite a few eggplants to make the sauce as the vegetable looses volume when it's grilled. The same goes for the capsicum.

I used yellow capsicums in this dish and as you can see the sauce takes on a saffron hue. Red capsicums give it more of an orange colour. I have never tried green capsicum as I didn't think it would be a nice colour combination. Other than that, there is no reason why you can't use green capsicum.

Pasta shells work really well in this dinner recipe as it's a good shape to cup the shells.  I have used spirals and fettucini in the past too.

I like my pasta sauce spicy and I have used both fresh chilli and powdered chilli in this recipe. You can omit one or both depending on your preference.

Meat lovers can add grilled haloumi, fried tofu, grilled chicken, cooked bacon bits or boiled prawns to make a more complete dinner meal. I was making this for some vegan friends so I didn't add any of the above.

I blended the grilled vegetables in a Nutribullet and the resulting sauce was a smooth puree. Blend it less if you prefer a less uniform sauce.

The recipe below makes a large amount of pasta. I was making enough for 10 people. Halve the amount or freeze half the sauce if you are cooking for less people.

Pasta with eggplant and capsicum sauce

4 eggplants (size of an apple)

4 yellow capsicum olive oil

8 cloves of garlic

juice from one lemon

300g of French beans

300g of mushrooms

1 cup of water

1 cob of corn

juice from 1 lemon

1 tablespoon of hot chilli powder

Sliced red and green chillies for garnishing

1/2 cup roasted cashew nuts also for garnishing

475g of shell, spirals or fettucini pasta

salt to taste

Cut the eggplant and capsicum into wedges, toss with salt and olive oil and place on a foil lined baking tray. Roast vegetables in an 180 degree Celsius oven for about 20 minutes or until the vegetables are charred on the edges. When the vegetables are cool, blend it in a food processor until smooth.

Peel and mince garlic. Thinly slice the mushrooms and french beans. Boil the corn and remove the cooked kernels from the cob. Cook the pasta to the instructions on the packet. Drain and set aside until needed.

Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a large saucepan. Fry the minced garlic until brown. Add the chilli powder and fry until fragrant. Add the blended vegetables and water to the garlic mixture and cook until the sauce is bubbling.

Add the mushrooms and corn to the sauce and cook for about 1 minute. Add salt to taste. Then add the pasta and lastly the french beans. Stir the pasta and beans through the sauce. Turn off the heat. Add the lemon juice and stir through. Plate the pasta and garnish with green and red chillies and cashew nuts.

* If you decide to use grilled chicken, bacon or haloumi, these can be added as a garnish too. If you are using seafood, add the prawns to the sauce (before the mushrooms) and cook for about 3 minutes. You might need to add additional water or the sauce might get too thick.

I miss the things I used to eat when I was growing up. There are so many new things to try now and so the tried and true recipes get shoved to the back of the line. Today I decided to go retro and made rock cakes. I have a very sentimental attachment to this cake, as it was the first cake I learnt to cook.

Back when my mother was introducing my sister and I to baking, we learnt that there were two main methods to cake making. The creaming method where you beat the butter and sugar together until the mixture turns a pale yellow colour or the rubbing in method where you rub butter into flour and then gradually add the other ingredients.

Rock cakes use the rubbing in method. It's lightly spiced and chockful of currants and mixed peel. Even now, while I'm writing this, I can smell the wonderful aroma of cinnamon, nutmeg and mixed peel wafting off the cooling cakes. It brings back memories of childhood, messing around in the kitchen and eating these cakes in the garden. I truly believe that the sense of smell is tightly linked to the memory centres in the brain.

I'm not sure why this is called a cake as it's more of a biscuit. Even more puzzling is why they are called rock cakes.  I suspect it's because the cooking process is similar to concrete making. You add sand and cement (butter and flour rubbed together then mixed with sugar) stones (raisins and currants) and water (egg and milk) to make concrete bricks. As you can see from the picture below, the dough does have the same consistency and texture as mortar.

Or is it called rock cakes because the baked product does indeed look like little rocks.  I remember one smart alec, telling me they are called rock cakes because you break your teeth on them. I didn't think he was funny then, don't think he is funny now.

The cakes aren't hard at all. They are cakey and crumbly and really delicious with a cup of tea.  If you let them get brown, the cakes are more crisp, more cakey when they are a lighter gold.

The recipe is from a venerable book of my mother's. The pages are yellow and curling and the cover has fallen off. It has some good recipes though and I look forward to rediscovering them.

Retro Rock Cakes
12 oz flour
A pinch of salt
3 tsps of baking powder
1/2 tsp grated nutmeg
1/2 tsp of mixed spice
6oz butter
5 oz sugar
3 oz currants
1 1/2 oz of candied peel
1 beaten egg
A little egg to mix

Grease baking sheet and dredge it lightly with flour. Sieve the dry ingredients and rub in the fat. Stir in the sugar, currants, mixed peel and mix well. Make a well in the centre and stir in egg and enough milk to make a stiff mixture. With a teaspoon and a fork, place mixture in rocky heaps on the baking sheet and bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes.

This recipe is so quick to make and taste delicous too. It uses white chocolate and cream cheese. The addition of dried pineapple and brazil nuts gives it a lovely flavour and texture. I love brazil nuts in fudge. The recipe is below. Make and enjoy.

Ingredients
250g white chocolate broken into small pieces
220g cream cheese
2 1/3 cup icing sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
a pinch of salt
3/4 cup brazil nuts chopped
1/4 cup chopped dried pineapple pieces
Rectangular baking tin

Method
Line the baking tin with greaseproof paper. Sieve icing sugar into a large mixing bowl. Add a pinch of salt, vanilla and the cream cheese to the sugar. Beat these ingredients with an electric mixer until smooth and fluffy. Melt the white chocolate in the microwave using a low setting and heating at 20 second intervals. The chocolate should be soft enough to work into the cream cheese mixture. Take care not to burn the chocolate. Beat the melted chocolate into the cream cheese mixture. Stir in the fruit and nuts. Spread the mixture into the prepared pan.  Freeze for an hour and then transfer to the fridge for another 2 hours before eating. Store fudge in the fridge.