The Italian art of cooking pasta: baked ziti with cauliflower

Hi, this is the eighteenth post about Italian cuisine. In the last entries we wrote  about simple pasta recipes with cauliflower. We want to go on with these themed recipe ideas and tell you how Sicilians prepare pasta with cauliflower.

The most famous recipe is pasta with “vrocculi arriminati”. In Sicily cauliflowers are called broccoli or vrocculi.

Sicilian pasta tossed with cauliflower: rigatoni with "vrocculi arriminati"

You can find the recipe in this page of our website.

This is only the first and most known version but there are other versions in the isle.

We like very much a version whose ingredients include tomatoes and almonds. Here it is the recipe modified in our kitchen and that we use to make in winter many times!

Ingredients / Serves 2

700 g (1.6 lb) cauliflower

2 young fresh onions, finely chopped

2 anchovy fillets in oil

300 g (10 1/2 oz) ripe tomatoes, peeled and chopped or 1 can cherry tomatoes

I tablespoon tomato paste

10 g  (1/3 oz) sultanas

10 g (1/3 oz) pine nuts

25 g (1 oz) almonds, peeled

140 g (5 oz) ziti

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon dry breadcrumbs

Salt

Grated Parmesan, if liked

People who follow the traditional recipe use bucatini. We prefer ziti. We like ziti very much.

Besides we  have also modified the cooking technique. In the traditional recipe cauliflower must be cooked in boiling water and then pasta must be cooked in the same water. We don’t like boiled vegetables. We prefer steamed vegetables.   So we make the recipe in this way.

We clean the cauliflower, remove the outer green leaves and the core from the stalk end. Then we break the cauliflower into pieces and break off florets (very little in order to cook them in few minutes). At the end we wash and steam them.

We soak sultanas in warm water.

We cook ziti al dente stage in abundant salt water (we dilute the steaming water of the cauliflower).

Meanwhile we prepare the sauce.  We toast almonds in the oven, let them cool and cut into pieces.

We put the olive oil in a non-stick frying pan together with the onions and anchovy fillets. We saute all the ingredients for 3-4  minutes, stirring and then we add the cauliflower, tomatoes and tomato paste. Generally we use ripe tomatoes but in winter we use canned cherry tomatoes as you can see in the photo below. We keep on cooking the sauce for about 10 minutes. At last we add also pine nuts, sultanas (squeezed of their soaking water) and almonds. We season to taste with salt, stir and switch off the gas. Look at the photo for more details.

We preheat oven to 180°C (350°F).

We drain pasta very well and put it in the pan. We stir and pour the tossed pasta into a large, shallow baking pan. We sprinkle dry breadcrumbs on the top and bake for 15-20 minutes.

It tastes fantastic!

Serve it warm or hot. We suggest not to add Parmesan cheese but to put a little bowl full of Parmesan cheese on the table. Every one can sprinkle it on the top of his pasta if he likes it.

Look at the photo for more details!

Sicilian pasta with cauliflower sauce

Look at the two photos. The main ingredients are the same but they are different, really!

Read all our entry titles about the Italian art of cooking pasta in this page

Greetings from Italy

Carlo & Loretta