This type of pasta is like having Sicily on lake Garda, J.W. Goethe said once he arrived in Sicily: ‘One understands Italy only after having visited Sicily’, and here we explore a distant region by finding through tastes so many similarities. Not only the lemons and oranges were brought to lake garda from Sicily but also many other products which need to be studied and rediscovered in order to be appreciated, one of this is the aubergine.
Livio uses the aubergine for this kind of pasta but also for slices of aubergine called ‘….alla parmigiana’.
However : pasta alla norma. The history of cooking crosses the history of music when we talk about the origin of this pasta. It had been dedicated to the great composer Vincenzo Bellini who was born in Catania, in 1801 (died in1835). The story of this pasta was started by Nino Martoglio (1870-1921), a well known playwright from Catania, who, while eating a plate of Maccaroni with tomato and aubergine he exclaimed: “Chista è ‘na vera Norma!“ which means ‘this is a real Norma’ referring to the pasta as a real masterpiece, hence from that moment on ‘pasta with aubergine’ but better still macaroni, became one of the Sicilian dishes most popular all over the world.
Ingredients: fresh aubergine from Mario’s garden, tomatoes, garlic, oregano, salt & pepper.
Procedure: Wash the aubergine and cut in little cubes. Sprinkle with some salt and leave to drain for a couple of hours. In the meantime prepare a tomato sauce by stirring the garlic with olive oil, add the fresh tomatoes, cut small or from tinned if you do not have any fresh but of a good quality, add pepper and salt. Once the aubergines have drained, fry them in extra virgin olive oil until the skin gets softer. Add the aubergine to the tomato sauce and add some oregano.
