Pasta alla Norma

Pasta alla norma is pasta tossed with a tomato sauce, fried aubergine and a shower of dried, salted ricotta salata. It's Catania's dish, and despite the name, Norma isn't a person who cooked it — it's named after Bellini's opera, reportedly because a diner once declared the dish itself "a real Norma," meaning a masterpiece.

What it actually is

Cubed aubergine fries until deeply golden and tender, then folds into a simple tomato sauce built on garlic and olive oil. Boiled pasta — often a short tube shape — tosses through that sauce, and the whole plate finishes with a generous grating of ricotta salata, a dried, pressed and salted sheep's-milk cheese that's firm enough to grate like Parmesan but tastes sharper and saltier. Fresh basil goes on last.

Ricotta salata specifically, not fresh ricotta, is what finishes the dish. Fresh ricotta is soft and mild; ricotta salata is dried and pressed until firm, which is exactly what lets it grate into a dry, salty shower over the top rather than melting or clumping into the sauce.

How it's served

• Hot, straight from the pan, ricotta salata grated over at the very last moment.
• With extra ricotta salata offered at the table for guests who want more.
• As a main course, a filling vegetarian dish on its own.

Writing it on a menu

• Flag gluten and dairy; the pasta and ricotta salata carry both.
• Say that it's naturally vegetarian, a straightforward option among heavier meat-forward pastas.
• Note that the aubergine is fried, not roasted, since that's part of the traditional texture and flavour.
• Mention if you finish with ricotta salata specifically, since a guest may otherwise assume a milder fresh ricotta is used.