Learn how to make Pasta alla Norma — a classic Sicilian pasta with roasted eggplant, sweet tomatoes, garlic, and fresh basil. This healthy vegetarian recipe is bursting with Mediterranean flavor and perfect for weeknight dinners or weekend gatherings.
In this video, I’ll show you step-by-step how to roast eggplant so it’s caramelized and not soggy, how to make a fresh tomato sauce, and how to bring it all together with pasta for a meal your whole family will love.
✨ Ingredients You’ll Need:
– Eggplant
– Fresh tomatoes (or canned San Marzano)
– Garlic
– Olive oil
– Fresh basil
– Pasta of choice (traditionally rigatoni or spaghetti)
– Ricotta salata (optional but traditional)
Recipe: “https://thewoksoflife.com/pasta-alla-norma-roasted/“ (search “Pasta alla Norma”)
💡 Why You’ll Love This Recipe:
✔ Authentic Sicilian flavor
✔ Healthy + vegetarian
✔ Easy step-by-step tutorial
✔ Great way to use garden tomatoes & eggplant
If you enjoyed this video, don’t forget to 👍 like, 💬 comment, and 🔔 subscribe to **Organic Oasis CA** for more delicious recipes and garden-to-table inspiration.
#PastaAllaNorma #ItalianRecipes #EggplantRecipes #OrganicOasisCA
Hi, this is Debbie from Organic Oasis in Northern California, zone 9B. Today, tomato Tim and I are going to be harvesting some plants and I’m going to be making a delicious eggplant tomato pasta recipe. Let me show you the plants that we’re going to be harvesting off of today. So, here’s where I have my eggplants growing. I have four plants. They’re in 10gon grow bags. They’re producing so much this year, it’s crazy. As you can see, this one little plant, it has a lot of little eggplants growing on it. In fact, I can count right now. One, two, three, four, five, six, maybe seven growing on this plant right now. We’re in midepptember. Here’s another one of my eggplants. This one doesn’t have anything growing on it right now. I harvested some recently, but no new ones. Here’s a little smaller eggplant that I have. And as you can see, I have one eggplant here that’s going to probably be harvested in about a week. Here’s one of my healthiest eggplants that I have this year. It’s huge. It’s a huge plant. And as you can see, I have one eggplant down there that needs to ripen. And then I have another little one up here that’s getting ready to almost ready to pick. Hi, this is tomato Tim and it’s the end of September and my plants are still really yielding. It’s been a great year for tomatoes and continues to be with this warm weather that we’ve got. So for the pasta dish today, I’m giving Debbie some some choices on what kind of tomatoes she wants. We have some slicer heirloom tomatoes. These are the chef’s choice yellow. We also have over here some more conventional tomatoes which are the better boys and we’ve got a couple ripe here. Or if she chooses she wants to get a little bit more of a thicker sauce, we can go with the paste tomatoes. Here are the San Marzano, the famous Italian tomatoes. We may not quite have two pounds of that, but if we finish that and don’t quite have enough of two pounds for the recipe, we can go over here and finish it off with these beautiful Yakv tomatoes. Notice how most of them are ripening at the same time because this is a determinant plant, whereas the others are indeterminate plants and ripe one at a time. So, dear, which ones do you want for this dish? I think I will go with the San Marzanos. Good choice. That’s my own. I was hoping you’d choose that because I’m going to enjoy eating those. Today we’re making pasta alanora with eggplant and tomatoes and beautiful eggplants from the garden. Organically growing. Super excited. And some morzano tomatoes from the garden. Super excited about this. Let’s make this delicious pasta dish. I can’t wait to try it. I’ve made this dish before from other recipes, but never from this one. I will post the recipe in the description and with the author’s name. Thank you so much for following. The first step is to take the tomatoes. You could use any kind you want. You can use plum, beef, steak, cherry, grape, but the first step is to go ahead and take them. I chose the San Morzano from our garden. And we’re going to be cutting these into onein pieces. And like I said, I had tomato Tim pick some San Morzano from our garden. So, I’m super excited. They’re delicious tomatoes and great for making Italian sauces or any kind of sauce really. So, this is a nice recipe. You don’t have to run these tomatoes through any kind of a processor to remove the seeds or skin. We’re just going to make the sauce with everything in it, just the entire tomato. Um, which I like because you know most recipes you have to strain the tomatoes, run them through a food mill, but not this recipe. So, we’re going to get two lbs. Now, we’re going to add a little bit of olive oil to the tomatoes. Just a drizzle. And I’m using this wonderful olive oil that was given to me as a gift and it’s right from Greece. Super delicious. Put on a little bit of pepper to taste, a little sprinkle of salt, or as much as you think you like. Once you’ve been cooking a while, you kind of figure out how much salt. At the beginning, I would say right here in this recipe, it doesn’t tell you, but put in maybe a half a teaspoon of salt and maybe a/ quart teaspoon of pepper. Then once you get you know exactly, you start to get the feel for how what taste you like, then you can kind of adjust it. I know that you saw how I did it. I basically been cooking for I’m 67. I started cooking probably in my late teens, so I’ve been cooking about 50 years. Um, so I’ve just I’ve just learned how to do it. So start with measurements and then eventually you don’t have to use those measurements. You can just kind of use your own experience and you’ll actually get to feel you’ll be able to feel the amount of salt you’re sprinkling and it just gets easier and easier. Mix it up. And we’re just going to spread it onto a sheet pan. I have this sheet pan here. I’m just gonna spread the tomatoes right on here. And we’ll be roasting these. So, just spread them out. Spread them out onto your sheet pan so they have plenty of room and space. We’re going to do the same thing now with the eggplant. We’re going to go ahead and cut it into slices and then cubes. Add olive oil and drizzle with a little bit of salt. And we’re going to add that to the sheetpan. I may use the same sheet pan as the tomatoes if I think it’s going to fit. The recipe actually tells you to use two separate sheet pans. So maybe it’s because I’m not going to have enough space in one. I have my 1 and 12 pounds of eggplant cubed. And we just do the same thing we did with the tomatoes. We just go ahead and put a little bit of olive oil, a little bit of pepper, and a sprinkle of sea salt. Again, if you’re not used to cooking, just start off with a half a teaspoon of sea salt and maybe a/ quart teaspoon of pepper. Give it a good mix. The eggplant will absorb the oil, but the oil is there. It’s just it’s going to suck it up. So, you may want to put more olive oil on. Um, since we’re roasting this, I’ll probably put a little bit more on. I don’t like to put a lot of olive oil, but you kind of need a little bit more when it’s when you’re using eggplant. It’s amazing how porous eggplant is. That’s probably what makes it so good for these Italian dishes is that it sucks up the sauce and it becomes so flavorful. So now I’m just going to take this and the same as we did with the tomatoes, I’m just going to put the eggplant onto the sheet pan. I had said earlier, I didn’t know if I could fit all of it on one, but you can see you can’t fit it all on one. It’d be pretty crowded. So, I’m going to go ahead and just do this so they all have their own space. So, since we put this on two different pans and now we need to put it into the oven and um we want all of these vegetables to roast. So, I’m lucky I have a convection bake setting on my oven. So, these should roast nicely. It’s going to take about 35 to 40 minutes, but I recommend halfway through cooking these, go ahead and switch the pans so that the the eggplant goes on the bottom and the tomatoes go on the top. That way, you’re going to ensure they’ll get nicely roasted. So, we’ll be back here in about 35 to 40 minutes. While the eggplant and tomatoes roasting in the 400°ree oven, we want to get some water boiling here to cook our pasta. I put a little bit of olive oil and salt in it. And now I’m going to add 12 oz of my pennet pasta. And you can use any shortcut pasta that you’d like. You can use any actually any pasta that you want to use. Um the recipe calls for a rigetony. This is what I had. So this is what I’m using. And the recipe says to cook it for only two to three minutes to for you know to keep it alante. But um they might be co you know they might be talking about a fresh pasta because this pasta that I’m using is from Costco. I buy it in bulk and it’s the garo follow from Italy. This one here. Um this needs to be cooked for 11 minutes. So if I want this to be alante, I will cook it for possibly maybe 9 minutes. But if I only cooked it two minutes, it would be really hard and it would not be very good. So, I’m going to boil my pasta for about 9 minutes. Now, it’s time to get our garlic ready to sauté in a sauté pan. So, you need five cloves of garlic. And I have my own garlic from my from my garden. I actually love this. This is an Italian garlic. It’s purple. It’s beautiful. So, I’m going to go ahead. I have five large cloves. And I’m going to go ahead and slice these. We want to slice these very thin. and we’re going to be sautéing them. So, let’s go ahead and do this. If you’re cooking along with me, slice up five cloves of garlic, and I will come back in a few minutes. I’m picking an Anaheim pepper for our dinner tonight. Here it is. So, here’s the Anaheim pepper plant here. And as you can see, it’s loaded with Anaheims, and I need to pick a couple for our dinner tonight. So, I’m just going to snip them off. They are not red right now, but they’re starting to turn. They’re yellow. So, I’m going to cut this one here. And I will cut this big one here. Right here. Need some oregano, too. So, I’m going to go ahead and cut some of this oregano here. Just snip off a few little pieces. Snip. I only need a few teaspoons. I’m just going to snip it like this. Just the ends here. basil. And I’m going to go ahead and pick it from my large leaf basil plant. I just love this plant. It’s got the biggest leaves. It’s awesome. Check this out. I also have this basil plant here, but I’m going to go today. I’m going to stick with the this big leaf. We also need to add an Anaheim pepper. And it calls for one red Anaheim pepper. Mine are not red. If I left them on the plant long enough, they would turn red. As you can see, they’re starting to turn yellow. The next step would be red, but mine are green. Green and yellow. I’m going to go ahead and use two of these. They’re more mild than when they turn red. So, I’m going to deseed these and then I will be julianing these. I’ve got all the seeds out and I wash these. So, basically, we’re just going to slice them into little thin slices. And I’m just going to Do little thin slices like this. And then we’re going to sauté the anaheim with the garlic and a little bit of olive oil in a sauté pan. And I just love having these growing in the garden again. My this year my pepper plants have just been so healthy and producing so much. And to be honest, last year I was not so lucky. I had aphids really bad. We have our pan. And now again, I’m going to put in a little bit more olive oil. Two to three tablespoons if you like to measure accurately. And we’re just going to add in the slivered garlic and the julian peppers. Now, I called for one Anaheim, I put in two, but because I didn’t have a red. And we got to get this heat up high here to get it cooking. We’re going to sauté the garlic, the slivered garlic and the Anaheim pepper for about 2 to 3 minutes. We’re supposed to add 1/4 cup of tomato paste. Actually, what I’m going to add here is I know this sounds funny, but it’s going to be um instead of adding tomato paste, I’m adding a tomato soup that I made. And I made it from scratch. Basically, it was a tomato soup that I ran through a processor, a strainer, and got all the seeds and skin out. And I made this lovely sauce that I turned into a tomato soup. So, because I don’t want to use tomato paste, I don’t want to open a whole can of tomato paste just to use a couple teaspoons. Instead of tomato paste, I’m adding this my I’m repurposing my homemade tomato soup. I had about a cup sitting in my refrigerator. So, that’s what I’m going to do. And as you can see, I put it in on high heat to try to evaporate some of the liquid and make it thicker like a tomato paste. So, see how now it’s thickening up. And we’re just going to cook this another couple minutes and then we’re going to move on to the next step. Next, we’re adding 2/3 cup of pasta water. So, I just took a ladle and I just took 2/3 cup out of my pasta that I cooked and I’m putting that water in. And that is they’re using it as like a thickening agent to thicken this sauce up. The pasta is going to have the water has like kind of a starch left in it. So instead of putting flour in to thicken it, it’s sort of you’re using the pasta water, which a lot of recipes do that. And now we’re also going to stir in our roasted tomatoes and our eggplant and some oregano. And we’ll season with salt and pepper. Okay, here comes the tomatoes. Nice and roasted. They look so good. These are I used 100% marzo, but I had one tomato, a yellow tomato that was starting to go bad, and I I did put that in as well. So, you’ll see there’s an orange one in there. And now I’m going to put in my eggplant. Okay, this eggplant is nice and roasted, too. Nice and soft. And here comes the eggplant. I’m going to just stir this up like this. You can see it’s really thickening up now. I’m going to turn down the heat and I’m going to get my oregano ready to put in. Okay, so I just harvested this oregano from my garden and we need to put in just um a couple teaspoons in here. So, I normally dehydrate my oregano and I pull it off the vine, dehydrate it, and crumble it up, put it through a blender. But I thought this recipe was special and I should use fresh um you know, fresh oregano, but it is kind of a pain to to chop this up. But I’m going to look at my recipe really quick just to give you an idea. If you want to use dehydrated oregano, it’s one teaspoon and fresh, it’s a tablespoon. So, I need to pick all of this off of here. Chop it up and then I’ll be putting it into the delicious pasta. Okay, here comes the oregano. I didn’t actually measure it, but So, we need a tablespoon, but I I really pretty much put in a lot. I had a lot of leaves. So, I’m assuming this is going to be enough. Again, it’s one tablespoon or it is going to be a teaspoon of dehydrated. And you should put it in to taste. I can also now pepper and salt. Again, so I already put salt and pepper on the actual tomatoes and the eggplant. I don’t want to overdo it. This would be a time when you should taste. You could taste this and see what you think it needs. I’m just going to put a little bit on. Again, this is from years of cooking. I just I don’t like to overs salt things. So, now we’re going to add the pasta. And I’m going to add just a little bit at a time. My pan is not that big, so I don’t know if I’ll be able to fit it all in here. I don’t have a giant sauce ski um sauté skillet. So maybe I need one. But the recipe called for a sauté a large sauté skillet. And I thought this was big enough. But as you can see, it’s going to be a little tight. Now, they say to put in another half a cup of pasta water, but I threw my pasta water away now. So, I’m just going to add regular water. And the idea is here is to start to create more of a sauce to cover up the pasta. So, we want to really kind of not that we’re smashing the tomatoes, but we’re just cooking things and trying to mix it so there’s a nice coating on the pasta. And they the recipe says to continue adding water. Continue adding water until you get the consistency that you want and that the pasta is nice and covered. So, I’m going to bring this back to a little simmer and I will be cooking this just kind of stirring it. So far, I just added the half a cup. And now they’re saying the recipe says to continue to add water by 1/4 cups until you have the consistency of the sauce that you want. Okay. So, we’re just going to keep doing this. And while this is cooking, I’m going to chop up my basil. Now, we’re going to cut up our basil. And I’ve got I grew this year a really cool basil. It’s a big leaf Italy. It’s awesome. It’s, as you can see, the leaves are just gigantic. I love it. Um, and I’m just going to chop this up. I’m going to try to curl this up to make it easier to chop it. We need about a/4 cup or a half a cup of basil to throw into this sauce. You can use parsley or basil. I have parsley out in my garden, too. Growing herbs is so easy and wonderful. I hope you’re growing lots of herbs, but um you can grow them in your house. You can grow them outside. This is the large leaf. I have other types growing out there. It’s just wonderful. Okay, this is going to go into our pan. Now, after I put in the last half a cup of water, I put in one more/4 cup because the recipe says to keep adding water by a/4 cup until you get it to the consistency you want and you get that the sauce really coating the pasta. So you can see now that I added a little more water, it’s very much coating the pasta and the sauce is thinning out a little, which I like. You can keep going until it’s the way you want it. Now we put in the half a cup of basil or parsley. This is basil from our garden. And I really suggest that you guys grow, if you haven’t started growing things in your garden yet, start with herbs. They’re so simple. You can even grow them in your kitchen in a window. Grow them under a grow light. If you don’t like gardening too much, you can get one of those little kits. It’s like um you almost you grow it inside and just water it with a little light system or little grow stations. Um and it’s pretty those are pretty easy to manage and you can grow a lot of vegetables that way. Okay, I’m going to put in one more cup of water here. and just cook it a little bit longer. Put in a little bit more basil. Since I picked it, may as well use it. It’s pretty. It makes It makes the dish look so colorful. I love that. And as you can see, putting in the more water I put in and the more I cook this, the more Look at how much thicker this is looking. The sauce is really covering this now. It’s really looking so much better. and so much more delicious. Okay, it’s time to serve it up. And we’re just going to serve it with some Parmesan cheese. You could use ricotta salada or pecarino or parmesan. I always have parmesan on hand, so that’s what I’m going to use. If you are looking for a way to use up eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, oregano, and basil, this just might be the recipe for you. Look at this. Okay, now for the taste test. Here we go. It’s kind of hot. I can tell you right now it’s super delicious. It’s really hot though. I don’t think I’m going to be able to eat much right now. I have to let it cool down. Are you looking for a way to use up your eggplants, your tomatoes, some peppers, oregano, basil growing in your garden? This is the recipe. It is out of this world. I’ll post the recipe and I hope you try it. Please comment. Please let me know if you make this recipe. Let me know if you like it. Even post pictures of your eggplants. I’d love to see them. Um, I love gardening and I’d love to share recipes. If you have any ideas, please post them. Thanks for watching.
1 Comment
This looks so yummy!!! ❤❤