Recipe - Pasta con le melanzane

A Sicilian classic

My grandfather always wanted something on the side to accompany his pasta. It is perhaps a non very Italian thing, but it seems quite normal in the Trapani area. So it’s not uncommon to see pasta cun l’agghia (pesto Trapanese) served with a side of cubed fried aubergines or with a side of, believe it or not, fried potatoes!

In fact fried aubergines seem to appear all the time on the table and adding them to a straight ahead tomato sauce seems to elevate the dish to a new dimension. There is a very famous pasta that comes from the other side of the island called Norma (in honour of the famous Bellini opera) and it’s quite similar to this, one of the main differences being the way the aubergines are cut and served.

In pasta alla norma the aubergines are thinly sliced and fried, but on the west coast I’ve seen more often the aubergines cubed. I also prefer to use a short chunkier pasta for this recipe (norma usually has spaghetti).

The beautiful Sicilian melanzana tonda

In this recipe you can also learn a basic tomato sauce that I use very often, i.e. one with a garlic base. I use polpa di pomodoro for this sauce so you get an idea of how to make it but feel free to use pomodori pelati and follow instructions as per below.

What really sets this dish aside is the use of fresh mint instead of the more common basil. Many people are used to conceive mint in a dessert context, but mint is used in savoury dishes all over the Mediterranean and for me it sits particularly well with tomato sauce.

Finally I finish this dish with one of Sicily’s greatest staples: ricotta salata. This is a salted and shortly aged version of ricotta that presents itself as a hard cheese and can be grated instead of parmigiano. When I was a kid this cheese was impossible to find in the north of Italy and we always used to buy a large quantity of vacuum packed ricotta in Sicily and bring it up north to survive through the winter.

A piece of Ricotta salata that I brought from Sicily all the way to Ireland

Nowadays I am seeing this product more often outside of Sicily and Italy, but I have to say that every time I bought it I have regretted it as it had no flavour whatsoever. The ricotta salata I get in Sicily and bring back home is mostly made with sheep cheese and has a very pungent smell and a rich salty but almost creamy flavour, it’s so delicious and it can transform a bland tomato sauce into an umami fest!

Probably your aubergine is gonna be bigger than the quantity needed for this dish, so I suggest you batch fry it cubed and save the rest for another dish. It lasts in the fridge for a few days and you can always quickly pan fry it in some olive oil before using it.

Ingredients

Serves 4