Tuna-Caper Pasta Sauce

From the department of Really Easy Late Night Dinners, here's some tuna-caper pasta sauce I made yesterday.

Lawson has a long tradition of kitchen-sink-style pasta dishes, usually containing tomatoes, canned tuna or clams, olives, parsley -- whatever's around. He hasn't made one in a while, though, and I wanted one, so I made my own version. It turned into a much more traditional Italian rendition than his usually are.

It's not a very tomato-ey sauce -- don't expect it to be red. The rich tuna flavor and the bright capers should be the dominant flavors. The garlic is more like a base.

• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1-2 tablespoons garlic, minced
• 1/2 cup vermouth
• 2 cans tuna, with juice
• 1 tablespoon capers
• regular (14.5 oz) can diced or stewed tomatoes, seasoned or plain
• salt
• pepper
• small handful parsley, chopped

Saute the garlic very slowly over medium-low heat until light golden. Add the rest of the ingredients except the parsley and simmer slowly until flavors blend, 10-30 minutes. The sauce should be fairly wet; it very easily gets absorbed into the pasta.

If you like, you can roast a pan full of diced eggplant at 450 degrees while you're making the sauce, then toss the eggplant in with the pasta and sauce. In that case, make sure the sauce is really wet.

I used bowtie pasta and several garden eggplants. It was enough for two dinners and one leftover lunch -- perfect.