Eggplant favourites, rooted in Sicily
The staple is beloved in regional recipes and all manner of extravagant food for feast days
It’s hard to imagine Sicilian cooking without eggplant.
You find it in every market, in every restaurant and certainly in every home kitchen. Having recently visited Sicily, I remember each eggplant binge fondly — and there were many.
It is always fascinating to see how cuisines and cultures collide. Sicily has been fought over and ruled by many peoples during the past 2,500 years, starting with the ancient Greeks. Each conquering group introduced ingredients from its home turf, adding layers to an ever-evolving local cuisine: the Greeks planted grapes and olives, the Romans contributed wheat.
But it wasn’t until the early Middle Ages, under Byzantine and Muslim rule, that eggplant became part of the everyday Sicilian diet. Eggplant, originally cultivated in South Asia, had long been a staple of Arabic cookery; now it is popular throughout most of the Mediterranean. The Spanish introduced tomatoes and peppers from the New World, two other ingredients that now lie at the heart of Sicilian cooking.
Sicilian cuisine today is varied, with beloved regional recipes and all manner of extravagant food for feast days, as well as incredible fish and shellfish from the coastline. But a recurring theme in daily cooking is the use of a few inexpensive, common ingredients: olive oil, eggplant, tomato and pasta, usually with a pinch of peperoncino, crushed hot red pepper. These are down-home, primal flavours, emblematic of so-called cucina povera, in which simple and delicious meals are made on the cheap.
Eggplant often stands in for meat. Slices dipped in bread crumbs and pan-fried in olive oil replace lamb chops, or are rolled with cheese to make involtini. Eggplant salads, eggplant pickles, eggplant-heavy pasta dishes, stewed eggplant, stuffed eggplant, grilled eggplant — you find all these and more in Sicily.
Three of the most famous eggplant dishes are pasta alla Norma, eggplant caponata and eggplant parmigiana. For each, there are countless variations, sometimes vastly different one from the other. Here I offer my own take, inspired by my travels.
Pasta alla Norma is humble, traditional and justly famous. The 19th-century composer Vincenzo Bellini is said to have adored it with such a passion (he ate it for lunch daily in his hometown, Catania) that the dish was eventually named after his opera “Norma.” You make a simple basil-infused tomato sauce, fry eggplant cubes in olive oil, toss both with pasta and shower with grated ricotta salata and toasted bread crumbs. Or do you? Some cooks forgo the crumbs. Some fry large slices of eggplant and lay them over the pasta, or ring the platter with them instead.
Eggplant caponata is of Arabic origin, presumably, since it is stewed in oil, sweetened with sugar and spiked
with vinegar. A kind of savoury preserve, it is often made in quantity and stored in jars for use throughout the year. This one has capers and green olives, but other versions contain raisins and pine nuts; I know a cook who includes a pinch of saffron. Some cooks add a lot of tomatoes, but I prefer just a touch of tomato paste. The seasoning is sweet, sour and salty, like a good pickle. Wait to taste it a day or two after it is prepared, so the flavours can fully meld. Serve caponata on little toasts as an appetizer or to accompany a meal — or as a picnic lunch with a loaf of crusty bread.
Eggplant parmigiana is often blanketed in tomato sauce, which makes this tomato-free version, which I learned from a Sicilian cook in a small town outside Palermo, rather unusual. She makes it by layering thinly sliced eggplant with tuma (a fresh curd cheese), caciocavallo, pecorino and Parmesan; I use fresh ricotta and smoked mozzarella for a similar effect. It is a bit like a lasagna without pasta. A dozen anchovy fillets are scattered on top. Those anchovies, melted into the crisp breadcrumb-and-cheese topping, provide a sharp contrast to the sweetness of the eggplant. I like to serve it at room temperature, with a tomato salad alongside.
These dishes taste best with spanking-fresh eggplant. Seize the moment at the market.