Tagliatelle with roast vegetables

Serves 4

Set your oven to 190°c

Blanch the tomatoes quickly in boiling water then peel, leave whole.

Top and tail the courgette, cut into 2 ” lengths, cut those into quarters or sixths longways, depending on how fat your courgette is.

Top, but do not peel the aubergine and cut into chunky finger size similar to the courgettes.

De-seed the red pepper and cut into chunky fingers to match the other vegetables.

Top and peel off the outer leaves of the onion and cut in half from the top towards the retained roots. They will hold the onion together and make it easy to cut longtitudinal slices (this is also a good way of cutting onion for Chinese stir frying).

Peel the garlic. (In fact I did all this preparation in the morning.)

Spread out all the prepared vegetables on a large or two smaller roasting trays, drizzle with olive oil and your chosen herbs. Put in the oven and cook for ¾ hour until soft. Turning a couple of times during roasting.

Char-grill the chicken or duck fillets. (These are the slithers of meat that lie under the breast of duck. They flash fry on my cast iron plancha in about 3 minutes.)

Cook the tagliatelle, my packet said 3 minutes which is not long enough, it took 6 minutes and was still al dente. Drain well.

Meanwhile quarter the cooked tomatoes and then tip all the roasted vegetables into a deep sided frying pan or casserole and stir in the creme fresh. Reduce the sauce until it is creamy, season with salt and pepper and then stir in the tagliatelle.

Put into a heated serving dish(es). Top the dish(es) with chunks of your chosen meat or freshly grated Parmesan.

There seems to be a lot going on at the end but nothing will spoil if your timing goes awry.

Tip. If you have left over pasta in a sauce ~ one of the most successful ways I have found of reheating is to put some milk in a frying pan, heat it up add the pasta and stir until heated through. We ate the leftovers for lunch today, I cooked sliced mushrooms in the milk to bulk out the meal a little before adding the rest. The flavours had matured; how often leftovers have that extra flavour burst!