Come una Norma | Rino Duca

Rino Duca | Come una norma

« Silence, messieurs, on ne s’entend pas manger! D’ou cette croyance rependue en Cocagne qu’il y a une certaine analogie entre la musique et la gastronomie, et qu’un repas est comme un orchestre avec ses accords, ses arpèges, ses soli, ses ensembles, ses adagio et ses fortissimos ». It was already taken care of by the very Italian futurism, backed by the poet Apollinaire, before the recent avant-gardes, to explore the field of synaesthesia, where hearing mingles with taste, melody fades into recipe. But a similar intuition is reposed in one of the most typical dishes of Sicilian cuisine: pasta alla Norma, with its sharp tomato, eggplant and basil that popular semantics has named after the masterpiece of the Catania composer Vincenzo Bellii. Perhaps because he had ordered a plate of eggplant pasta at the premiere of Norma in Catania; more likely as the city's tribute to his talent, when he had now transmigrated to other shores. "I wanted to deal with a great classic of Sicilian cuisine, looking for a deeper meaning to its name," Duca explains. " So the idea of proposing as accompaniment the Casta diva aria interpreted by Callas, recorded on an iPod, so as to give musicality to the tradition through synesthesia. On the plate I have reproduced a pentagram, on which I put paccheri pasta stuffed with eggplant cream, tomato sauce and salted ricotta fondue, plus the ever-present basil. The notes last 4 minutes and 40 seconds, and the guests at the table spontaneously pace the duration of the tasting on them. "Come una Norma" it means "Like a Norma", and I called it in this way as a popular expression that has long been in use in Sicily, designating all that is beautiful."

Ingredients for 4 servings 

20 paccheri

For the tomato sauce

• 500 g ripe tomatoes
• 8 basil leaves
• 1 clove of garlic
• 30 g of diced celery
• 50 g diced onion
• 40 g diced carrots
• Extra virgin olive oil to taste

For the eggplant cream

• 400 g purple eggplant stripped of skin and diced
• 4 sprigs of fresh oregano
• salt pepper to taste

For the salted ricotta cheese fondue

• 100 g grated salted ricotta cheese
• 150 g of whole milk
• 10 g of overcooked durum wheat semolina pasta

For the ink

• 50 g eggplant skin
• 100 g water
• 10 g of overcooked durum wheat semolina pasta
• 2 g vegetable charcoal

Method

For the tomato sauce

Take the whole garlic clove with a tablespoon of oil, add the carrot celery and onion, and sauté for a couple of minutes over an andante heat.
Add the tomatoes, 3 ladles of cold water and 8 basil leaves. Lower the heat and cook for about 40 minutes. When cooked, season with salt and pepper, and blend in the thermomix until the sauce is thick, creamy, and silky.

For the eggplant cream

Lay the eggplant cubes in a baking dish with a couple of tablespoons of oil, salt and pepper, a add the oregano sprigs. Bake in the oven at 200°c for about 12 minutes.
Remove the oregano, which by now will have given up its aromatic part, and blend the eggplant in the thermomix adding 3 tablespoons of good quality oil and water a little at a time until silky smooth. Adjust with salt if necessary.

For the salted ricotta cheese fondue

Process all ingredients in thermomix for 5 minutes at 60°c. Store in the refrigerator inside a sac à poche.

For the ink

Bake at 200°c the eggplant skin in the oven until completely dry. Blend it with 100 ml. of water, the overcooked pasta and the charcoal.
You will get a black sauce that is runny but not too runny. Once cooled, it will have the right density to be used for ink.

Plate composition

Draw a treble clef and the five lines of a pentagram in ink on four plates.
Cook in boiling water the paccheri, leaving them very al dente. Let them cool and cut them in half to make half paccheri.
Stuff them 2/5 with the eggplant cream, 2/5 with the tomato sauce, and 1/5 with the ricotta fondue.
Complete cooking in the oven for about 4 minutes at 200°.
Serve by arranging the paccheri on the plate as if they were notes from Norma, imagining Callas singing Casta Diva.


Dish photo is by Paolo Terzi
Rino Duca's photo is by Lido Vannucchi