This 15-Minute Creamy Pasta Dinner Tastes Like It Takes Hours

Nothing takes to fire quite like eggplant. Grill it, and the mild, slightly earthy vegetable melts into something smoky, creamy, and deeply savory. It’s this transformation that makes mutabbal—Middle Eastern grilled eggplant dip—one of my favorite mezze of all time. (It’s right up there with muhammara for me.) That mix of charred eggplant, nutty tahini, fresh lemon juice, and garlic, all scooped up with a warm pita, is a magical bite for me. Baba ghanoush, a typically chunkier version of mutabbal topped with vegetables such as roasted bell peppers and chopped tomatoes, is yet another favorite mezze of mine. 

A couple of summers ago, when I was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I started blending those flavors into a pasta I kept coming back to. I’d step outside in the early evening to grill eggplants, their skins blackening as the light faded. I’d scoop out the soft flesh and stir it into a sauce with bursting cherry tomatoes and whatever vegetables I’d picked up from the market. I’d finish it with tahini, lemon juice, and a generous grating of Parmesan. I called it baba ghanoush pasta as it features many of the same flavors of the dip. This unfamiliar presentation of deeply familiar flavors felt playful, grounding, and lush all at once. 

Now that I’m finally back in New York City, I’ve traded the grill for great bagels, but as soon as the weather warmed up, I started craving that pasta again. That’s when I realized I could easily replicate this favorite dish of mine by letting leftover homemade or good-quality store-bought mutabbal or baba ghanoush do the heavy lifting. The result? A smoky, lemony, garlic-rich pasta that cooks in just 15 minutes—no grilling required, no flavor sacrificed.

Mutabbal vs. Baba Ghanoush (and Why Either Works in This Pasta Dish)

Mutabbal and baba ghanoush are not exactly the same. Both are popular Middle Eastern mezze made from grilled eggplant, both are lemony and garlicky, and both get a generous glug of olive oil on top. Generally, across the Levant, the differences come down to texture and what’s mixed in. Baba ghanoush is typically chunkier, almost like a very tender eggplant salad, and often mixed or topped with pieces of roasted red bell pepper, chopped tomatoes, mint, and sometimes green onions. It traditionally includes pomegranate molasses, while a drizzle of tahini is optional. 

Mutabbal, on the other hand, is smooth and creamy—grilled eggplants are thoroughly mashed with tahini and garlic and sometimes finished with an optional drizzle of deep garnet-red pomegranate molasses. Both are typically garnished with pomegranate seeds and walnuts. In Lebanon, the creamy, tahini-forward version is almost ubiquitous, often referred to as both mutabbal and baba ghanoush. In Jordan, both versions are common, but we ate more mutabbal in my Palestinian household growing up.

For the purposes of this pasta, either mutabbal or baba ghanoush works, as both can be loosened with pasta water and briefly cooked down into a silky eggplant sauce. To be honest, most packaged baba ghanoush sold in the US is closer in style to the tahini-forward mutabbal anyway.

The Fast and Flavorful Technique

The sauce comes together very quickly while the pasta boils. (For this dish, I like fusilli, with all its little twists and ridges that collect the sauce, so each bite is plush and intensely saucy.) You start by sizzling a generous amount of sliced garlic in olive oil, just long enough to coax out its sweeter, more mellow side. Then come the cherry tomatoes, added along with a few sprigs of thyme. The tomatoes hit the hot pan and blister almost instantly—their skins split, juices spill into the garlicky oil, and the tomatoes soften just enough to become ever-so-slightly saucy and concentrated. The thyme adds a gentle woodsiness that rounds out the tomatoes’ sweetness and brightness. 

When they’ve burst, the tomatoes are set aside, more garlic goes into the same pan for round two, followed by the baba ghanoush and a full cup of pasta water—don’t skip this part. The pasta water helps loosen the dip into a silky, clingy sauce that coats each piece of pasta. The eggplant sauce then goes into the pot with the pasta. 

Rich and savory Parmesan is added with the pasta over low heat, melting gradually into the sauce. This gentle heat is key: It gives the cheese time to emulsify with the pasta water and baba ghanoush instead of seizing up, which leads to a grainy texture. Crank the heat too high, and the cheese can clump or turn grainy when the fat separates from the proteins. 

A generous squeeze of lemon brightens it all up (feel free to add more lemon juice if you’re going for a distinctively lemony pasta), and most of the blistered tomatoes go back in for a lively pop of sweetness and texture, the remainder topping the pasta as a juicy garnish. 

This spirited, silky pasta comes together in less than 30 minutes. It’s beautifully finished with a drizzle of olive oil, a pile of Parmesan, and a few torn leaves of basil or mint. The final dish is a display of vibrant flavors—smoky, citrusy, vegetal, and savory, with bursts of tomato and the gentle hum of garlic in every bite. This dish also proves that a little kitchen improvisation can lead to a cherished staple.

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