Pasta Sorta Norma

Adapted from Rachel Eats blog by Rachel Roddy

Serves 2 (with 8 ounces of pasta)

Rachel Roddy, an Englishwoman, has lived in Italy for over twenty years. She, her partner, and their son divide their time between Rome and Sicily. She has written three superb cookbooks. This recipe for pasta with eggplant, tomato, basil, and cheese is inspired by—but not exactly—Pasta alla Norma, a dish typical to Catania in Sicily. I adapted it from her blog, Rachel Eats. I call it Pasta Sorta Norma.

1 eggplant (I use 1 small Italian, not Japanese, eggplant weighing about 8 ounces)
Extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, peeled and cut into thick slices
400g tinned plum tomatoes, roughly chopped (I squish them by hand)
Salt
Fresh basil (If you don’t have fresh basil, just leave it out—don’t substitute dried)
Pecorino Romano, or Parmesan, or ricotta salata (I prefer the Pecorino Romano)
Short pasta – penne works well

Cut the spiky cap from the eggplant and then cut the eggplant into 1 cm thick slices. (A centimeter is slightly more than 1/4 of an inch.) Cut the slices into 1 cm cubes, first cutting in one direction, then perpendicular in the other.

Cover the bottom of a sauté pan with 1 cm of olive oil and warm over a medium-high flame. Once the oil is quite hot, add a single layer of eggplant and cook until tender and golden, then remove with a slotted spoon onto a plate. (Because I use such a small eggplant, it all fits in a 3-quart sauté pan. If all your eggplant doesn’t fit, cook it in batches.)

You should still have some olive oil in the pan; if not, add some more. You want about 4 tablespoons of oil in the pan before adding the garlic. Once the olive oil has cooled a little, add the garlic and cook until lightly gold and fragrant—do not let it burn, or it will be bitter.

Add the tomatoes and cook, stirring often and pressing gently with the back of a wooden spoon, until thick and saucy but not dry. Add salt to taste. Add the eggplant cubes to the tomatoes, cook for another minute or so, then pull from the heat—and still off the heat, add a handful of fresh torn basil leaves.