It was our first night in Palermo. My husband and I were on our honeymoon but chose to visit with relatives, who insisted we stay in their lovely home. My cousin Patrizia sat us down for supper: breaded cauliflower pasta with pine nuts, raisins, and capers.
"This is just like my mother's recipe!" I exclaimed.
"It is a family recipe," Patrizia said with a smile.
So, for years, that's what I thought—until I researched Sicilian recipes for my novels. While I have yet to see this particular cauliflower pasta on a restaurant menu, I uncovered a bevy of similar Sicilian cauliflower pasta recipes, such as Pasta chi Vruoccoli Arriminati.
But none had the capers, which my mother says add the slightly bitter and salty tanginess that's essential to counter the sweetness of the raisins. Then I stumbled on Michele Di Pietro's MangiaWithMichelle.com recipe for Sicilian pasta with cauliflower, pine nuts, raisins, and—bingo!—capers.
Michele, a New Jersey-based cookbook author, food writer, menu and recipe developer, professional chef, culinary consultant, and former certified public accountant, was gracious enough to take time out to chat with me about this recipe. We discussed her twist on a family classic, the essential ingredients, why you should overcook cauliflower, and what she hopes readers will take away.
Tell me about your background.
I am. I'm 100% Italian-American. I'm half Sicilian and half Abruzzese. My mom's parents came from Sicily separately at the turn of the century when they were young, and my dad's parents were immigrants as well.
What is the history of Sicilian Pasta with Cauliflower, Pine Nuts, Raisins, and Capers for you and your family?
My mom used to make a dish that was sort of like an overcooked mash, kind of partially mashed cauliflower with lots of onions. She would finish it off with bread crumbs, and it was really, really good. And she would make a pasta with broccoli that is also very similar to that, whereas the broccoli is overcooked and it becomes sort of like the sauce for the dish. It's mixed with Pecorino. And so this is kind of a combination of those two ideas.
For me, it's like the way that she would make pasta with broccoli, and also thinking of the pasta with cauliflower dish that she used to make me.
I am a trained chef. I worked in the food service for many, many years, and most of my job was for many, many years was innovation and trying to come up with different ways and interesting ways of doing food to make things interesting. So it's just ingrained in me to always try and do things a little bit differently.
Crispy capers, pine nuts, raisins, all three of those are very Sicilian ingredients, but the way that they're put together in this pasta is not really traditional. I think the traditional dish just has pine nuts and raisins and often anchovies, which I left out. So it's basically, it's kind of inspired by a traditional dish with my personal history based on my mom's dishes. And then, me wanting to add my own twist with the pine nuts and the Marcella wine-soaked raisins.
Why are the pine nuts, raisins, and capers important in this recipe, and how do they contribute to the overall flavor?
Well, they contribute both in flavor and texture. Texture is a really important part of flavor. And so, for me, the capers are important because they add brininess and saltiness and, therefore, also umami, but they add texture because they're crispy. So that makes it interesting. The raisins add a pop of sweetness in a place where you wouldn't expect sweetness. And eating the savory pasta dish and the Marcella wine, like I said, that's just sort of like a fun, interesting twist on it, which just adds a little bit of extra flavor. They're important because they're all rooted in traditional Sicilian ingredients.
You intentionally overcook your cauliflower. Why?
A lot of Italian Americans and Italians tend to overcook their vegetables, which is the exact opposite of what I learned in cooking school. I often think about, oh my god, Chef So-and-So from cooking school would fall over if they saw me cooking my vegetables like this. Why do Italian Americans and Italians tend to overcook their vegetables? I'm not really sure, but they do. And what happens to it in a dish like this is if it becomes part of the sauce. It's really a vegetable-based sauce. And it'll become more of a sauce the more you overcook the cauliflower because it allows you to mash it or smash it with a fork. And when we combine it [with the other ingredients], that will emulsify it, thicken it, and kind of coat the pasta, which is why it's really nice with the hearty pasta; it holds onto this heavier-in-the-texture sauce.
My mother uses breadcrumbs when she makes this dish. Can you speak to why Sicilians use breadcrumbs?
Well, it goes back to cucina povera, the combination of using what you have and not having a lot. So, back in the day, they didn't always have Pecorino Romano. I'm sure they didn't have any cheese at all, but they had leftovers from bread. So breadcrumbs were a way to add a little something to different dishes, a lot of times in pasta.
There are two iconic pasta dishes for [St. Joseph's Day]. One of them, which I also have a recipe for on my website, has breadcrumbs and anchovies. It's very, very simple. It's spaghetti with breadcrumbs and anchovies, and it doesn't have cheese. It's just toasted breadcrumbs, and it gives you all that texture. With that dish, specifically, the breadcrumbs represent the sawdust of St. Joseph, who's the patron saint of Sicily.
What do you hope readers will take away from your recipe?
I hope that all my recipes bring people together around the table. And I guess the last thing is I always just want people to make the recipe their own. I like all my recipes to be an inspiration. And just like I was inspired by the recipes and I made recipes my own, I would like them to do the same thing. So if they don't want to have crispy capers or they don't like capers, leave the capers out. Or if they want to make this recipe with broccoli instead of cauliflower, then do it.
>>Get Michele's Sicilian Pasta with Cauliflower, Pine Nuts, Raisins, and Capers recipe here!<<
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