My friend Rania recently showed me how she makes Makdous, which is eggplant cured in olive oil and that is the inspiration for my newest pasta recipe, Penne Pasta with Makdous, Tomato and Feta . Making Makdous is a pretty tedious process and I will make a post on that later. I will quickly tell you how it is made. We started by preparing the eggplant. This is just removing the stems. We then boiled the eggplant briefly. Next, we salted them and placed them in a colander with a weighted plate on top so they could drain the bitter juices. This was left for 2-3 days and then the eggplants are stuffed with a mixture of walnuts, garlic and hot pepper (mild if you like). They are placed in jars and covered with olive oil. I was not there for the actual “stuffing portion”. When it was all said and done, I got two big jars out of the deal, which I really appreciated. These little delights are not much to look at but the flavor is indescribable. In case you didn’t know already, I like to take traditional recipes or ingredients and do different and unusual things with them. I had been eating these on Triscuits with a little piece of Feta cheese on top when it occurred to me that they would go great with some pasta. So that is how I came up with this recipe. I will be posting Rania’s recipe for the Makdous later but in the meantime, if you just want to buy some, you can go to www.hashems.com and order them by clicking here. You will notice in the recipe that there is no added salt and that is because the Makdous are pretty salty so you don’t need any additional. Hope you enjoy this gluten-free recipe. And as always, you could use regular pasta if you like. This was my first time using Gluten free pasta and I can honestly say that I would use it again. This is a quick and easy recipe that I hope you will try out yourself. Let me know what you think.
- 4-5 Makdous (Oil Cured Eggplant)
- 1 14.5 ounce can diced tomatoes
- ¾ Cups Feta Cheese
- 1 12 ounce Package Gluten free Penne (or normal Penne)
- ¼ Cup Fresh Parsley, chopped
- Bring a large pot of generously salted water to a boil.
- Add the pasta and cook 11-13 minutes or as directed on the package.
- While the water is coming to a boil, place 4-5 oil cured eggplants into a skillet.
- Turn the heat to medium high, then add in the diced tomatoes.
- Cook until the pasta is ready.
- When the pasta is cooked, drain and add to the skillet with the tomatoes and eggplant.
- Stir well, then crumble the Feta cheese over the pasta.
- Sprinkle on the fresh parsley and serve. Afiyet olsun!
