Serious Eats: Recipes
Dinner Tonight: Pasta alla Norma
My goal with this recipe for Pasta alla Norma was simple: to convince my wife that eggplant could be delicious. Since I hear complaints of "greasy" and "bitter" and "slimy" on a regular basis, I decided to ease her into the eggplant world with this recipe in which eggplant plays more of a complementary role. I pulled it from a feature in this month's issue of Runner's World with Joe Bastianich, famed restaurateur partner of Mario Batali, son of Lidia, and current judge on Masterchef. The eggplant melts into the sauce and gives the dish some meatiness without meat.
Bastianich takes a couple precautionary measures with the vegetable: First, he salts it ten minutes before cooking to draw out moisture and tosses it with a little flour before sautéeing in olive oil, which seems to create a nice protective barrier and prevents the eggplant from from soaking up too much oil, as it has a tendency to do. Finally it drains on paper towels again while the sauce—a simple pomodoro with caramelized onion and fresh basil—comes together. A dollop of ricotta on top, and guess what? It was delicious, even according to my wife.
Any ideas for the next eggplant dish I can serve?
About the author: Blake Royer founded The Paupered Chef with Nick Kindelsperger, where he writes about food and occasional travels. After a year in Estonia, he's now living in Chicago.