Pasta e cavolfiore alla siciliana (Sicilian Style Pasta and Cauliflower)

Cauliflower is all the rage these days, showing up in all kinds of trendy dishes from cauliflower rice to —Heaven help us!—cauliflower pizza. But Italians have been eating cauliflower for ages before it was “cool”, as a soup or in a salad, sautéed, steamed and sauced, battered and fried, pickled, gratinéed … And of course, with pasta, as in today’s dish, pasta e cavolfiore alla siciliana, or Sicilian Style Pasta and Cauliflower, known in Sicilian as Pasta chi vruccoli arriminata. Along with pasta con le sarde and pasta alla Norma, this is one of the most iconic pasta dishes in Sicilian cookery.

Pasta e cavolfiore alla siciliana pairs a long pasta, usually bucatini, with cauliflower that’s been parboiled then simmered with a quintessentially Sicilian combination of sweet and savory flavorings: onions, anchovies, raisins and pine nuts. As it simmers, the cauliflower reduces into a kind of creamy ‘sauce’ which Italians would call a condimento. To finish the dish, the slightly underdone pasta is added to the pan to finish cooking along with condimento, then served topped with toasted breadcrumbs.

The recipe involves a few steps, but they’re all quickly executed. This is one of those pasta dishes that you can whip up in less than a half hour. And it’s super tasty and satisfying, practically a meal in itself. All of which makes it ideal for weeknight dinners. And I’ll take this over cauliflower rice any day of the week.

Ingredients

Serves 4-6

• 500g (1 lb) bucatini (or spaghetti or another long pasta)

For the condimento:

• 1 small cauliflower, cut into small pieces
• 1 small onion or 2-3 shallots, finely minced
• 2-3 anchovy fillets
• A handful of raisins, soaked in warm water until soft
• A handful of pine nuts
• olive oil
• salt and pepper

Optional:

• 1-2 cloves of garlic
• 1/2 tsp saffron, dissolved in warm water
• 1 Tb tomato paste or a few canned tomatoes, milled
• A small pinch of red pepper flakes

For the topping:

• 50g (1 cup) breadcrumbs
• olive oil
• salt

Directions

Cut up a small cauliflower into its flowerets, cutting the larger ones into two or more pieces, so you have all small pieces.

Bring a large pot of well-salted water to a gentle boil. Add the cauliflower and boil for about 5 minutes, until tender with just a bit of bite left. Do not discard the water.

While the cauliflower is cooking, sauté the onion (and garlic if using) in abundant olive oil until soft and translucent. Then add the anchovies, and when they’ve melted into the onion, add the raisins and pine nuts. If using, at this point you can also add the optional saffron or the tomato paste and/or red pepper flakes.

Transfer the cooked cauliflower to the pan, give it a toss, then add a ladleful of the cooking water. Simmer the cauliflower and its flavorings until fully tender, stirring and breaking up the cauliflower with a wooden spoon or spatula as you go. The cooking liquid should almost entirely evaporate.

Meanwhile, while the cauliflower is simmering, add the pasta to the pot where the cauliflower was parboiled, and boil until slightly underdone.

Add the pasta to the pan with the cauliflower and flavorings, along with another ladleful of pasta water. Toss and simmer until the pasta is fully al dente and the pasta is fully cooked. By this point, the condimento should have turned into a rough purée that clings nicely to the pasta as you toss them together.

At some point—any point will do—sauté the breadcrumbs gently in olive oil until golden brown. Turn off the heat and season lightly with salt.

Serve topped with the breadcrumbs.

Notes

Choosing the pasta

Most recipes for pasta e cavolfiore alla siciliana call for bucatini (or spaghetti or spaghettoni). You will also find a few with pasta margherita (the Sicilian version of mafaldine). And while long pastas are typical, you will find a few recipes calling for short pasta shapes, in particular penne or fusilli.

In fact, this dish is a bit unusual, as vegetable condimenti typically take short pasta shapes. This is because large pieces of veg tend to fall off strands of pasta, so it’s better to use pasta shapes that will catch them. But here the cauliflower condimento works just fine with a long pasta, since it reduces into a near purée that clings nicely to the strands of pasta.

Preparing the condimento

The cauliflower can be white, green or purple, as you prefer. Green would perhaps be the most typically Sicilian choice.

While onion, anchovies, raisins and pine nuts are core flavorings that show up in almost every recipe, you can vary the condimento for your pasta e cavolfiore alla siciliana with optional ingredients. Saffron is no doubt the most common. In fact, it shows up in the most canonical recipes, so it is likely original to the dish. Saffron lends a lovely color and perfume to the dish so redolent of Sicily. It’s expensive, though, so I’ve left it as optional.

The other main variation on the condimento is an in rosso or ‘red’ version with tomato paste or a few puréed fresh or canned tomatoes. This version can include a peperoncino or a pinch of red pepper flakes for a bit of heat. This version makes for a nice change, but if you go this route, forego the saffron. The tomato would mask it color and flavor.

There are also some slight variations on the core flavorings, too. In her lovely La cucina siciliana di Gangivecchio, Wanda and Giovanna Tornabene suggest shallots instead of onions. And in his rather eccentric recipe in Bugialli on Pasta, Giuilana Bugialli calls for red onion (reflecting his Tuscan background, I’m guessing) along with broth and basil leaves. Some recipes call for garlic in addition to, or even instead of, the onions. And I’ve seen at least one recipe where sardines substitute for anchovies.

Finally, if you want to get fancy, you can use a hand mixer to the condimento to get a perfectly smooth purée rather than the rough mash. In this case, omit the raisins, or add them after you purée so they don’t turn the sauce dark.

Cooking the pasta

In one recipe for pasta e cavolfiore alla siciliana I’ve seen, the saffron is added to the pot when cooking the pasta, lending it a pleasant golden hue. It’s a nice idea, but seems pretty profligate given the price of saffron!

Finishing the dish

The Tornabenes have a slightly different way to finish the dish. Rather than finishing the cooking of the pasta with the cauliflower, the pasta is boiled until fully cooked, then mixed with the cauliflower, covered and left to rest for five minutes before topping with the breadcrumbs and serving.

But perhaps the most common variation for finishing off the dish is baking it. Slightly underdone pasta is combined with the cauliflower sauce, topped with breadcrumbs and sometimes grated cheese, then baked in a hot (200C/400F) oven for a 15-20 minutes, until a crust forms on the top.

Toppings

For either baked or unbaked versions of pasta e cavolfiore alla siciliana, you can top with some grated caciocavallo or pecorino cheese in addition to the breadcrumbs. Bugialli in fact calls for a topping of grated pecorino romana (or parmigiano-reggiano!) and no breadcrumbs.

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