What the fuck is this strange word, I cannot even pronounce it ….
ingredients for 4 servings (cost about 1 € pp)
- Salt
- 500 g fresh pasta without eggs
- 1 fresh pepperoncino
- 1 green eggplant
- the solid parts of a tomato can
- EV olive oil
- 2 garlic cloves
- 40 g parmigiano reggiano or grana cheese
- chopped fresh herbs (mint, oregano or parsley)
This is a magnificent dish, an alternative of many Italian sauces made with eggplant, most famous of them is Norma.
Green eggplant is not very common. It is mainly collected during autumn months and has a very thin skin, that makes it wonderful. Green eggplant is with no doubt the queen of this kind of vegetables. But if you cannot find green you can proceed with common black ones.
Maltagliatti is maybe the most easy to make fresh pasta shape. Its name means “badly cut”, so you understand that is something that has not a strict form. Usually they are triangles or squares or triangles and squares, or whatever we want!!!!! The only thing that we have to take care is that maltagliati must always have the same thickness, in order to be boiled uniformely.
So, we prepare 500 grams fresh pasta without eggs, as we already have learnt, or as you can see here and with a pizza cutter, we cut it in triangles. But first of all we have to prepare the sauce.
We cut the eggplant in slices and each slice in smaller pieces. We salt it and we put it in a strainer for half an hour in order to remove humidity. We pat it dry and we fry it (170 Celsius degrees), roast it or broil it. We set aside.
In a cold skillet we add some olive oil, the fresh pepperoncino and the garlic cloves cut in slices. We bring to gentle heat and when they start to turn golden we add the tomato. We salt and we cook them for about 10 minutes.
Meanwhile we boil the maltagliati for a couple of minutes. We carry them in the skillet and we start to mantecare them with some boiling water and the half portion of cheese.
We put them on plates, we garnish with chopped fresh herbs and the rest of the cheese and we serve.
