A little bit of Sicily in Cairo 

Chili, eggplants, tomatoes, pasta, what could be more Sicilian? 

To this day there are many similarities between the North African and Sicilian tables, that can be traced back to the Arab conquest of Sicily in the 10th and 11th centuries. These include the use of pistachios, couscous, cinnamon, rice, as well as some methods of drying fruits. Both cuisines feature eggplants, which continue to be a staple in Sicily, where they were often used as a less expensive replacement for meat. 

Each year and with the advent of Sicily's scorching summer comes the cooking of Pasta alla Norma. Originating from the island’s second-largest city, Catania, it is said to be named after the opera Norma, which was composed by one of the island’s most beloved inhabitants Vincenzo Bellini. There are a thousand different recipes for this pasta and even more debates about what type of pasta you should use, whether you should fry or roast the eggplant, whether you should add fresh basil directly to the sauce or at the very end, when serving. But it essentially involves the preparation of fresh tomato sauce, frying squares of eggplant and then serving tossed through pasta and topped with salty ricotta, giving you a cacophonous dish heaving with flavor. 

Cooking time
1 hour 30 mins
Serves 2–3

Tomato sauce
800g of ripe tomatoes
a large onion, cut into quarters
2 tbs butter
2 large tablespoons of olive oil
sea salt
2 small eggplants
olive oil
handful of basil leaves
3 basil stems
pinch of chili flakes
100g ricotta or cottage cheese
2 cloves of garlic, sliced
260g (around 2 cups) of tubular pasta like rigatoni

Cut off the tops of the tomatoes where the core is and then cut into quarters. Then peel and cut the onion into quarters. Put the onions in a frying pan with the oil, tomatoes, butter and a generous pinch of salt on low to medium heat and cook gently for 10 minutes. Turn the heat down to low and cook for an hour. Take off the heat and blend the sauce with a hand blender until smooth. Check if it needs more salt, then set aside.

Cut the eggplant into cubes that are around 1.5 cm. You don’t want them to be too small, otherwise they will absorb too much oil. Put the eggplant on some paper towels and sprinkle with plenty of salt. Leave it to absorb the salt for 15 minutes. Doing this will draw out the bitter juices from the eggplant. Now blot the eggplant with the paper towels until it’s dry.

Put onto a baking tray and drizzle with oil, using your hands to make sure the pieces are all coated with all. Bake for 20 minutes or until golden, shaking the tray so that both sides get crisped while cooking. When it’s ready, put it aside. Bring a large pot of water to boil. Separate a handful of basil from its stems. Put the leaves aside.

Meanwhile, put two large teaspoons of oil in a frying pan, add the basil stems and garlic and gently fry on low heat for two minutes. Add half the tomato sauce to the pan. (keep the rest of the sauce in the fridge or freeze for use later on) Add the chili flakes and gently simmer.

 Cook the pasta until al dente, around 11 minutes or so. Before you drain the pasta add five or so tablespoons of the starchy pasta water to the tomato sauce and stir through until it’s silky. Add the eggplant to the tomato sauce and take the sauce off the heat. Add the pasta and stir through until it's coated in the sauce. Now add the basil leaves and stir through the sauce. Serve in plates topped with the cheese and a basil leaf.

Secrets to making this recipe work

Eggplants: you want to choose firm, blemish-free and shiny purple eggplants, as these are the freshest. When they are really black it means they are old. And you don’t want to skip salting, which is what takes away the most bitter juices. Sometimes I fry the eggplant, but recently I have been baking it as it's less oily and more convenient. Last time I cooked this I put on the tomato sauce and then used the cooking time to do chores around the house. When the sauce was ready, I put the eggplant in the oven and boiled the water for the pasta while it was cooking, and then lunch was ready.

Tomatoes: Remember you want to use the ripest tomatoes you can find to make this sauce, and they must not be refrigerated so that they have maximum flavor.

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