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This sounds so so good! What a great idea to use pepitas. I've gone the pistachio route before, but I think I will have to try this!

The microwave is great for cooking eggplant - you get a great silky texture and only need a fraction of the oil.

Here's one of my recipes for a South Indian eggplant curry and here's Mark Bittman's adaptation of it (from this article). It's really good, I promise :)

I made an easy eggplant salad last night.

Roast some eggplants and some garlic. When both are totally tender, scrape off the eggplant skin and mash the flesh together with the peeled, roasted garlic. Add salt, pepper, butter and chopped cilantro. Chill and serve.

The longer you chill the salad the better it tastes.

I love the idea of baking the bacon right on the top! Since I'm more of an Italian cook than a southern one, I usually just make my "baked beans" stove top, and substitute the BBQ sauce and sugar for canned tomatoes and thyme, and then pancetta for bacon. The fabulous thing about this recipe is that it calls for Dijon, which I think could be a great crossover ingredient for my version here: http://www.biggirlssmallkitchen.com/2009/02/working-with-what-you-have-one-stop.html

cheer!

I was so disappointed to find out she used canned pork n' beans.

Hey girls! Thanks so much....... the end result using Rondele [similar to Boursin I believe] with garlic/herb was delicious and this will indeed become a keeper! Very easy to make, as well as a very simple fresh taste. I otherwise followed Gina's recipe to the letter as I always do on the first run. That pasta water addition is an important point that should not be dismissed as well.
We had this recipe with Greek dry rubbed grilled pork tenderloin.......outstanding :)

Pine nuts occurred to me too, after I made this for the fourth time last night, and used yellow squash as well as zucchini. This is a great recipe from which to adapt, and a damn fine breakfast too.

Made this for dinner - really nice! I kept the zuke in half-moons, omitted the celery, and added some very finely chopped lacinata kale. Yum with pear cider out on the deck on this warm night.

Jackie,

I don't think Fontina will work with this recipe per se. The secret here is that the gorgonzola's very creamy texture and high fat content means that it simply melts right into all the other ingredients and disappears as a solid form, coating the pasta with its fat and flavor.

To duplicate that, I think you would need something that can melt in a similar way. Otherwise you are going to wind up with stringy globs; finely grated Fontina would make teeny stringy globs. A very creamy soft-ripened robiola, like La Tur, would work, maybe. If you can find it, Stracchino would probably melt similarly. I'd have to test it out for you to give a definitive answer.

I made this recipe tonight and it is simply marvelous! The balance and interplay of flavors is just perfect. I actually scaled the ingredients down by half to make a single (big) serving for myself. Worked just fine.

A few points - the ingredient amounts in the recipe are spot on, resist the urge to tinker. Also there's no need to add parm, pine nuts or more pasta (yeesh) everything the recipe needs is already there. Use top-notch ingredients - great pasta, organic veggies and herbs plus a good quality gorgonzola dolce (not "gorgonzola crumbles") and you'll be well rewarded!

Lastly, the big idea with this dish is the mellow subtlety of flavors and textures. It's not supposed to be a big Gorgo bomb. Just follow the recipe and you won't go wrong.

Oh, goody! I was going to make Zucchini Tarte Tatin with Polenta for dinner: http://guiltykitchen.com/?p=227 - But it's a little too labor/time intensive for my liking for this evening, so I am thrilled to have this lovely sounding recipe to try! Our zucchini is coming in like crazy (but sadly, the tomatoes are not), and I have made soup, breads, casseroles, plain ol' sauteed with Parmesan, fried, and I've even managed to "gift" some friends and family members with zucchini. Amazingly enough it's STILL coming in! I look forward to trying this tonight - Thanks for sharing!

I made this Thursday night. Doubled the recipe. I increased the shallots and garlic (just because!) and used the gorgonzola from Costco (Bel Gioioso) and added a bit more at the end to bring the sauce together. Loved it! This is definitely a repeater.