I have already pointed out that in Catania we can cook aubergines in a million of ways. A classic pasta dish to prepare along with parmigiana is pasta alla Norma (possibly with the leftover tomato sauce and aubergines).
Ingredients:
1/2 l passata
1 clove of garlic
3 spoons olive oil
Salt
Coarse salt
2 oval aubergines
Salted grated ricotta (if you can’t find it use parmesan)
Basil
Pasta as much as you need
Buonissima! Very tasty!
E’ tantissima! It’ a lot!
The suffix Issima is used to emphasize something: Bellissima (very beautiful), Grandissima (very big) Carissima (very expensive).
Andiamo in cucina!! Let’s go to the kitchen!!
*get the aubergines ready: wash them, take off the top bit and cut them in thin long slices of more or less 0.5 cm.
Put a bit of coarse salt on top of each aubergine and put them in layers inside a bowl. Cover the aubergines with a plate and put a weight on top of the plate so that the aubergines will be squashed. All of this so that the bitter water inside the aubergines will come out. Leave the aubergines like this for about 1hour.
*in the meantime, prepare the sauce: In a pan, brown slightly the garlic in the olive oil and add the tomato sauce. Add a bit of salt. Cook for 30min. At the end, when it’s still hot, add some basil leaves and stir.
*get now your aubergines, rinse them and squeeze them. Pat them dry with kitchen roll.
In a frying pan, add a couple of cm of frying oil and fry each slice for about 3 min. Put them again on kitchen roll to absorb the excess of oil.
*Prepare pasta as us normal, in salted boiling water. When cooked, add the sauce, the aubergines, some grated salted ricotta (or parmesan if you can’t find hard salted ricotta where you live) and a basil leaf.
It’s ready to eat 🙂
Buon appetito! Enjoy!
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l' itaLEEano 