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, but I’ll take this over cauliflower pizza 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.
Pasta e cavolfiore alla siciliana
Ingredients
- 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
Instructions
- 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
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36 Comments on “Pasta e cavolfiore alla siciliana (Sicilian Style Pasta and Cauliflower)”
Hi Frank, thanks again for your posts. The cauliflower seed I planted this year, to my surprise, yielded pale green heads which matched the ones we had seen earlier this year in April in Cefalu and Trapani. No planning, just happened. Once again a great, simple recipe that was delicious and Winter warming.
That’s fantastic, John! I love that kind of cauliflower, so hard to find around here…
My Great Aunt would make a tomato sauce with cauliflower and she would use rigatoni noodles; did anyone else make this and would you share the recipe?
How about soaking yellow raisins in white wine? Also, no saffron in this? Otherwise, sounds much like pasta con sarde, senza sarde…and with cavolfiore invece di finocchio.
Why not yellow raisins, I suppose. And yes, saffron is included in many (thought not all) recipes—so it’s listed as an optional ingredient. And I agree there’s quite the resemblance to pasta con le sarde in particular in flavorings, though the combination of sardines and fennel give that dish a very different taste at the end of the day.
Wow, this sounds like a true Italian classic! I love how versatile cauliflower can be and incorporating it into a pasta dish is such a smart idea. I can’t wait to try making the pasta e cavolfiore alla siciliana. I agree, traditional dishes will always reign supreme over trendy options like cauliflower pizza. Thank you for sharing this recipe!
Couldn’t agree more, Raymund. Thanks so much for your comment!
Cauliflower truly is all the rage lately. I was always kinda eh on it, but we’ve gotten on board lately with a recipe our neighbor shared. Still can’t get on board with the cauliflower pizza crust, though. I haven’t tried cauliflower in pasta yet, so I’m putting this on the list. Definitely a must try!
I think you might like it, David. Even if you’re not usually a fan of cauliflower. There are so many wonderful flavors going on here…
I didn’t know there’s an authentic Italian pasta with cauliflower – I thought it’s quite modern creation from outside of Italy. How interesting! Great combination of flavours – I’m particularly intrigued by the sweet notes coming from raisins. Again, I thought it’s something you don’t see in Italian pasta. So, thank you for an educational post and terrific pasta recipe! 🙂
You’re welcome, Ben! Glad you liked the recipe. And hope you try it… 🙂
My grandmother Felicia who grew up in Lipari Sicily use to make this. I don’t remember the tomato paste but the rest is familiar. She used raisins, pignoli, breadcrumbs, anchovies a lot in her dishes. Even in her grilled finocchio
Yes, indeed, it’s a classic combination. And for good reason!
Really lovely! At first I thought that was bottarga, but, breadcrumbs. Still a fabulous dish, but I so love bottarga! I love the condimento ingredients.
It’s a classic flavor combination for good reason! Thanks for stopping by. 🙂
Thanks so much for sharing this recipe. Sicilian cuisine is one of my favorite ones. I love the combination of savory and sweet taste. Happy cooking e un caro saluto,
Paola
Grazie, Paola! 🙂
Whereas my dream would be to live in Sicily, I cannot do raisins in savoury dishes. The rest of the flavours sound divine.
Well, if you were to live in Sicily, you’d run into this combination of flavors a lot. So your dream might turn into a nightmare, lol! In fact, the addition of raisins and pine nuts in savory dishes is one you’ll find all over central and southern Italy. But seriously, the dish would work perfectly well if you removed those two ingredients, in which case you might want to consider one of the optional ingredients like a pinch of hot pepper for interest.
Cauliflower I have loved since babyhood when in the simple Nordic way it arrived boiled with brown butter.poured over 🙂 ! Knowledge and appreciation of Sicilian ways with capers, nuts and anchovies arrived on the scene later! Have not made a pasta dish quite like this – but then there is tonight . . .
I love cauliflower simply steamed, too. My go to is anchovy sauce, as in this recipe, but brown butter sounds equally as nice. Still, this combination of flavors is quite special. Worth a try!
We adore cauliflower so I know we would love this too. Will definitely hive this a try. Thanks Frank.
Hope you like it, Eva!
I am not a cauliflower fan but it looks interesting in this recipe. I may have to try it.
I’m flattered that you’re willing to try it, even though you don’t care for cauliflower. Do be aware that this method really does lean into the taste of the vegetable, though… !
Brilliant – I love cauliflower and buy one weekly, but have never had it with pasta before! I’d be tempted to to try chopped sundried tomatoes as an option instead of paste or fresh ones.
In that case, I’d suggest going with fresh. Sun-dried tomatoes have such a strong taste of their own. But then again, it might be nice… worth an experiment!
I was thinking of skipping the raisins and using chopped sun dried tomatoes in their place.
I will also take this over cauliflower rice or pizza any day — in fact, I would love to have this dish for supper tonight, but I think it will need to wait till tomorrow, as I have no cauliflower. I never had this in Sicily but I can assure you I will be making up for lost time. Thanks.
Hope you like it, David. Actually, since I know you’re an aficionado of Sicilian cookery, I’m pretty sure you will!
Interesting to combine pasta and cauliflowers…it sounds and looks delicious and comforting too.
Indeed it is. Thanks so much for stopping by, Angie!
Frank,
This sounds lovely, thank you. Must try this one for sure
Andrew
Hope you like it, Andrew!
Cauliflower is pretty much a staple vegetable here in Scotland Frank. I’ve never combined it with pasta before so this is something new for me to try. Looks like a delicious recipe. Thanks!
I hope you like it, Neil! Thanks for stopping by.