Anelletti al Forno

A dish built on the deep Arab imprint on Sicilian cooking. In 1154 the geographer al-Idrisi, writing his Book of Roger for the Norman king Roger II, described the town of Trabia east of Palermo, where water-mills turned out great quantities of itriyya, dried string pasta shipped across the Mediterranean to Calabria and beyond, the earliest record of dried pasta in Italy and a full century before Marco Polo. The ring-shaped anelletti are said to have been made in the Saracen mills between Trabia and Termini Imerese; popular legend likens their form to the earrings of Arab women, though the sturdy ring was more likely perfected over centuries to hold its shape in a moulded dish. The baked timballo itself descends from Arab cookery, its name from the Arabic timmala, a drum-shaped vessel. Between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the Monsù, French-trained chefs of the Sicilian aristocracy, refined it with game and black truffle; twentieth-century industrial pasta made it the everyday festive dish it is today.

Cut into a wedge, it shows clean layers: tender rings bound in a dark, sweet-savoury ragù, soft sweet peas, ribbons of silky fried eggplant and pockets of molten caciocavallo, all under a crisp, toasted breadcrumb crust. Rich and full-flavoured, it holds together on the fork yet stays moist, as good warm as at room temperature.

The timballo holds its shape thanks to starch and cheese. Boiling the anelletti only to a firm bite leaves them starchy enough to keep absorbing sauce in the oven without turning to mush. As it bakes, starch that has leached from the pasta and the melting caciocavallo, whose casein network loosens and releases fat above roughly 60°C, knit the filling together; on cooling the starch retrogrades and the cheese proteins re-set, so the dome firms enough to unmould and slice. The exposed breadcrumbs and pasta brown through the Maillard reaction for a crisp crust. The ragù's long braise converts tough collagen to gelatin, giving body that coats every ring, while frying the eggplant collapses its spongy tissue, drives off water and caramelises its sugars, so it melts rather than stewing to a watery pulp.