This is Lolly, from Weeknight Pasta from Italy, twice-monthly 30-minute seasonal pasta recipes that Italians actually cook at home. If you are new here, benvenuto!
Please drop me a ❤️ above if you’re enjoying this foodletter and recipes, it really helps others find me. Subscribe if you want more! And share with a friend you like.
Because I’ve been receiving so many questions around raising children in Italy, I created a separate Substack, Raising Bambino, where I’ll share all things parenting in Italy: feeding Italian kids, education, daily life, what it’s really like to be part of a famiglia, seasonal, traditional living, and the Mediterranean pace of life. Subscribe to experience what its like to bring up a child in wonderful Italy. I’d love to see you there!
On to the pasta of the day! As you know, I’m a fiend for caramelized vegetables. The jammy consistency of roasted cherry tomatoes and eggplant combined with creamy mozzarella and garlic makes this pasta irresistible. While this recipe is certainly a riff on the Sicilian Pasta alla Norma, it’s not that. It’s seismically easy and while I vowed to stick to authentic Italian recipes here, I feel my mother-in-law’s approval may be enough to make this a one-time exception. I haven’t found this pasta recipe in Italiano on the internet anywhere. (CariItaliani, mi fate sapere se sbaglio e questa ricetta esiste già!)
This is the first dish I ever made for my Italian MIL in 2011…and she declared it to be ‘molto buona’. If you know her, or you have an Italian mother-in-law, perhaps you appreciate this achievement which is paramount to receiving a university degree or scaling Mount Everest. So celebrate belatedly with me, pull up a chair at the table, grab a fork, and listen to my story. This is my personal offering to the tavola and the recipe was birthed by accident.
caramelized jammy little tomatoes with roasted melty eggplant happily dancing in a maze of mozzarella, extra virgin olive oil, garlic and fresh basil
One Summer in Tuscany…
I became a mother in Italy. My son, Matteo, was born in May 2011. Italian maternity leave is quite generous, so I spent my first summer learning to be a new mamma with my in-laws at their home in Castagneto Carducci, Tuscany. The house lay at the edge of the flat vineyards between the Mediterranean Sea and the steep upslope to the hilltop village, its narrow stone streets crowned with a medieval castle. My in-laws’ modest 2 bedroom coral-painted stucco home was simple and well-cared for, decorated as it had always been with the same soft orange couch, 1970s yellow-varnished kitchen cabinets, and dark tiled floors.
Contrary to the simplicity of the inside of the house, outside was a bounty of opulent riches. The house was surrounded by a silvery grove of 80 twisting olive trees whose fruit was harvested every fall to make homemade oil, two towering figs to feed us and the birds, and assorted chubby apricot, lemon, and pomegranate trees. Deeper in the grove grew candy-sweet uva fragola aka strawberry grapes and white figs. Close to the house, yellow grapes wove a protective roof of vines and leaves on a pergola over the outdoor table where we ate most of the meals. An outdoor wood-burning oven for baking pizza or farinata sat to one side of the table next to a brick outdoor grill.
My mother-in-law fed me primi, secondi, and dolci all summer. My father-in-law grilled local pork chops on the stone piastra. Cooked in its own fat, the succulent meat only needed a splash of extra virgin olive oil and sprinkle of salt for seasoning. They spoiled me.
Our days were ruled by sun and shade. In the early morning we threw open the shutters to let out the stale air and bring in the fresh. Cambia d’aria, or change of air. Several hours before noon, the house was shuttered tight again, the thick walls shielding us from the sun’s baking heat if not from the incessant hum of the cicadas.
While the baby napped in the afternoons, I studied for my l'esame teorico della patente di guida or Italian driver’s license exam. On the hottest of days, I would lay on the cold tiles, willing them suck the heat out of my body while I turned pages. My mother-in-law would watch TV; she’d been cooking all morning.
from top left: Matteo fascinated by the play of bright sky and dark vines of the pergola, Castagneto's castello, baby's first visit to the beach and mamma's crazy beach hair, sunset view from the table, an olive tree viewed from inside a hammock
On weekends my then-husband would come down from Como. Together, we took the baby to the beach for his first dips in the salty sea.
I wanted to make a simple meal to show my mother-in-law my appreciation and share some of the workload; I was simultaneously terribly intimidated by her cooking prowess. This woman was a force in the kitchen, making a 10 course meal for 20 people regularly for every holiday on the Italian calendar. Her reaction to my offer to make a lunch was predictable; I could make something if I wanted but it was completely unnecessary.
I insisted out of my good Midwestern manners and anxiety to please, choosing one of the few things I knew how to make. My concept was a room-temperature roasted tomato and eggplant salad with fresh mozzarella, basil, and garlic, an old Mark Bittman recipe that I’d been making on repeat. Everybody loved it. However, I made far too much of the salad, so the next day, returning from the beach, my MIL cooked some pasta with the intention of dousing it in sugo di pomodoro when I saw the leftover salad and offered to mix it with the pasta instead - and so this dish was born - and buona!
The combination of warm pasta with cold salad is not too hot, not too cold, just right for eating under a shady Tuscan pergola overlooking the blue Mediterranean on a hot summer day. The savory mozzarella and caramelized vegetables absorb the spicy garlic and olive oil in one of those delicious-on-day-1, even-better-on-day-2 situations. Imagine you’re in Tuscany, overlooking the sea, and it tastes even better!
pst! Scroll to the very bottom to download recipe pdf!
Fusillotti with roasted cherry tomatoes and eggplant with mozzarella
Fusillotti alle melanzane e pomodorini arrosti con mozzarella
FOR 2 PEOPLE
The ingredients
500g cherry tomatoes, cut in half
560g eggplant, sliced thin then cut into halves or quarters, approx double the size of the tomatoes
14 Tbls good quality extra virgin olive oil
6g / 1 tsp salt
3g / 0.5 tsp freshly ground pepper
185g mozzarella
1-2 cloves of garlic, finely diced
6 large leaves or 12 small leaves of fresh basil, chopped
360-400 g fusillotti, fusilli, farfalle, or other short pasta
The method
1) Preheat oven to 200 degrees C / 400 degrees F. Add all the tomatoes and eggplant to an oven tray. Pour over 10 Tbls of the olive oil, all the salt and pepper. Stir to coat and distribute evenly, trying not to overlap. Put tray in the oven and set timer for 30 minutes. Our goal is to dehydrate the vegetables, turning their carbs into sweet, rich sugars. Remove from oven and set aside.
roasted cherry tomatoes and eggplant slices. ciaoooooo
2) Meanwhile, cut mozzarella into cubes and mix with garlic, basil, and 4 Tbls olive oil. Set aside for flavors to meld.
mozzarella, garlic, basil and olive oil, melding flavors
3) Fill a big tall pot with water and salt and set on high heat stove burner. Taste the water to make sure it’s salty like the sea (and add more salt if needed).
4) If you have time, let the vegetables cool a bit before adding them to the mozzarella and stir. If not, just add them and mix together. It will still taste divine. The mozzarella will just get melty.
5) Strain pasta and add to the mozzarella and vegetables. Stir to combine flavors.
Spoon into pasta bowls.
Buon appetito!
Notes:
Eggplant: When they roast, they’ll shrink to half the size, which makes them the same size as the halved cherry tomatoes, which makes eating the pasta nicer.
Doubling the recipe for 4 people: I used 1 tray for 2 people. For 4 people, you need 2 trays or to roast the veggies in 2 batches on 1 tray, one after another.
Salt: It’s important not to skimp. This salt is flavoring your pasta.
Cheese: you can substitute the mozzarella for feta cheese. We do this all the time. Still summery, still Mediterranean, still delicious. To make it vegan, leave out the cheese or use vegan feta.
Extra virgin olive oil: The olive oil is your sauce so its important! Don’t skimp! If it says ‘extra virgin olive oil’ and ‘cold pressed’ on the glass (not plastic) bottle, that’s a good start! Reference Olive Oil Unfiltered for more tips on selecting an olive oil you like.
Pasta:Look at your pastas in the supermarket before you buy. Choose the brands that are made with 'slow, low heat, ‘bronze-cut’ with pasta color that is not yellow, but off-white.
Lolly, thank you for sharing a tender personal story and another great recipe! And, with your subtitle, I feel like a part of the goodness. ; )
A fabulous dish 😍