Pasta alla Norma

Catania's signature pasta puts fried aubergine and tomato together and finishes with ricotta salata, the pressed and salted sheep's milk cheese that is grated rather than spooned. The name is usually traced to Bellini's opera Norma; Bellini was Catanese, and the attribution most often repeated credits the playwright Nino Martoglio with calling a plate of it a real Norma, ranking it with the opera. The story is unverifiable but the association is old enough to have stuck. Rigatoni, maccheroni and sedani are the usual shapes, all of them ridged or tubular, because the sauce is chunky and needs somewhere to lodge.