This is one of the Italian pasta recipes that are made worst outside of Italy. In the first place, the right type of pasta is hardly ever used. You will see it made with spaghetti or penne, even with farfalle, but the correct thing is to use sedani rigati, which is somewhat longer than the usual macarroni. Secondly, the sauce used is ordinary tomato sauce when it needs to be flavored with garlic and basil. Third, the aubergine is often too greasy or too bitter and to finish the pasta is sprinkled on top with Parmesan cheese or even grated mozzarella when it is appropriate to use salty sheep ricotta.
Anyway, if you want to kill an Italian, give him either a Hawaiian pizza with pineapple on top or a Pasta alla Norma as it is served commonly in rest of the World. Much more effective than hiring a sniper, where does he end up.
You will tell me that all this is more sybaritism than pragmatism and what does it matter to use one type of pasta or another if they all taste more or less the same. Well, it starts like this and it ends up making paella with chorizo or Olivier salad with surimi sticks.
Pasta alla Norma is the star dish of Catania, on the island of Sicily. Catania is a beautiful city with thousands of years of history, just a step away from the Etna volcano. Among other curiosities, the number of times it has been destroyed by earthquakes and rebuilt in a stubborn way, as well as the shield of the city where an elephant is represented, which is also part of a famous fountain in the center of it. with a curious story that I leave you to investigate on your own so as not to make this introduction too long.
The name of the dish is a tribute to Bellini's opera Norma, considered one of the best of all time. It contains the famous aria Casta Diva, the greatest icon of bel canto.
INGREDIENTS (4 people):
500 grams (1.1 pounds) of sedani rigati
1 purple aubergine
Salted Sheep Ricotta *
Extra virgin olive oil
* This type of cheese, which is used to grate it on pasta, can only be found in stores specializing in Italian products. It will come from Sicily itself or from Sardinia.
For the tomato sauce
1 Kg (2.2 pounds) of ripe or very ripe "star" type tomatoes **
2 cloves of garlic
1 teaspoon salt
1 sprig of basil
Extra virgin olive oil
** This is the "star" type of tomato:
First of all we are going to prepare the aubergines. We cut them into thick slices, not longitudinal, and immediately put them in a bowl with water that was heavily laden with salt. In this way we eliminate the bitterness of the aubergine and also seal the pores, so that when you fry it, it will not become oily. The eggplant is not peeled. It should soak for around 20 minutes.
While the aubergines are soaking we make the tomato sauce and cook the sedani.
As tomato seeds give an acid flavor and the skin a bitter one, many cookbooks indicate that both should be removed. It is really only necessary to remove the seeds. To do this, we are going to cut the tomatoes in half and with a teaspoon we will easily remove the central pulp.
We place a grater on a bowl and grate the tomato halves being careful not to "grate" the tips of the fingers. Do not worry, the skin will gradually retract and it will not be grated with the pulp. By grating the pulp we avoid the problem of color change, since it will not be necessary to pass it through the food processor or the electric mixer.
In a non-stick frying pan, pour a generous jet of olive oil. We heat without it getting to smoke and add the tomato (be careful! It has a lot of water and it can jump). We give a couple of turns and reduce the heat. If we do it to a minimum, it will take about 40 minutes to do. If it is medium-low, about 20. Add the teaspoon of salt, the peeled garlic cloves and the basil sprig. The casserole must be covered. This way the tomato will not jump leaving the kitchen dirty and also the water will not be lost.
After time we lift the lid and check the flavor. We rectify salt if necessary. If we find it very acidic then we can add sugar but carefully, don't overdo it. And now is the time to decide how thick you want for your sauce. If you want it very thick, then lift the lid and let it cook until the sauce takes time to "regain" the central space when the spoon passes through the bottom of the pan. If you want it liquid, leave a couple of additional minutes for the water to evaporate but without ceasing to watch, because a sauce to a medium burnt sauce is only a mistake.
The flavorings, that is, garlic and basil, are removed at the end of cooking.
We cook the sedani according to the manufacturer so that they are al dente.
While we drain the aubergines and fry them in olive oil so that they are well browned on both sides. Once this is done, we let them drain the excess oil on a rack or on absorbent paper.
It is time to prepare the presentation.
We place a large quantity of tomato sauce at the bottom of a deep plate - pasta is always eaten in a deep plate-.
Next we add the cooked pasta and two or three slices of fried aubergine. We stir with another little tomato sauce that we will add on top.
Finally, we grate sheep's ricotta cheese and if we want, it is garnished with a fresh basil leaf.
