Sicilian Food by Mary Taylor Simeti

Author:Mary Taylor Simeti
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Bisac Code 1: CKB000000
ISBN: eBook ISBN: 978-1-908117-91-5
Publisher: Grub Street Cookery
Published: 2009-11-19T05:00:00+00:00

CHEESED PASTA

(Pasta ‘Ncaciata)

Serves 8

850 ml/1¾ pints pork and veal ragù (see preceding recipe)

2 large aubergines

Salt

225 ml/8 fl oz olive oil (see note)

675 g/1½ lb rigatoni, penne rigate, or other fluted pasta

25 g/1 oz dried breadcrumbs

225 g/8 oz tuma, primosale, or mozzarella cheese, sliced

3 hard-boiled eggs, sliced

175 g/6 oz grated pecorino cheese

Prepare the ragù as directed.

Wash the aubergines, remove the stems, and cut them into thin (6 mm/¼ inch) slices. Sprinkle with abundant salt, and allow to drain in a colander for an hour or so. Rinse well, pat dry, then fry in the olive oil until tender and browned on each side. Drain on paper towels.

Cook the pasta in abundant boiling salted water and drain when barely arrived at the al dente stage. Mix together with the ragù.

Grease a large, deep ovenproof casserole, line it with breadcrumbs, and then line the bottom and sides with the aubergine slices, overlapping them so as to make a pretty pattern. Fill the casserole layer by layer as follows: pasta, slices of cheese, pasta, slices of egg, pasta, slices of cheese, pasta. Sprinkle 50 g/2 oz of the grated cheese over the top and bake it in a 190C/375F/gas mark 5 oven for 15 to 20 minutes.

Remove the casserole from the oven. Allow it to stand for 10 minutes, and then turn it out upside down onto a platter. Cut in wedges and serve, passing the remaining grated cheese on the side.

Note: The classic version requires a layer of diced salami as well, but since my family feel strongly that salami loses its charm when hot, I always omit it from cooked dishes. You may wish to do otherwise.

Finances permitting, one could proceed to further courses at one’s wedding breakfast, but all the pioneer ethnologists of the nineteenth century report that it was the pasta that made the party, and Carlo Levi bears witness to this tradition’s having survived the Second World War.

I had climbed up to the villa, marvellous in its architecture and in the gardens high above the town in front of the sea, where the wedding banquet of one of the maidservants was going on, with a flight of doves from the wedding cake, and dancing, and a dinner consisting, as was the custom, in one sole course of pasta al forno with a meat sauce, followed immediately by Jordan almonds, cakes, almond crisps, beignets, coloured desserts, macaroons, chocolate rolls, ladyfingers, Swiss pastries, and by an endless quantity of spumoni and cassatas, of ice-cream moulds in chocolate and mocha, filled with hazelnut, with cream and strawberry. The duchess ruled the party with good-natured authority.

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