Driving on the outskirts of Gela in Sicily last summer, we passed a truck, its open back full of pea-green, electric-purple and white cauliflowers. Such trucks are a familiar but always striking sight in Italy. Especially this one, with its particularly high wall of tricolour heads, a few of which had toppled off and rolled into the road, where they had met with a messy end. We stopped for petrol and lemonade at a garage on the opposite side of the road. I think I tried to take a picture, but it was someone else in the car who summed up the scene: “Joker truck,” they said. I didn’t understand what they meant immediately, but when I did, all previous descriptions – cumulus clouds, cream-coloured curds – disappeared, and all I could see were green shirts, purple suits and white faces: a pile of Jokers from Batman.
Months later, and it is still the first thing that comes to mind when I pick up a cauliflower. Even a freshly cut one with cream curds and sculpted leaves from my friend Carla Tomasi’s garden is a vegetable of great beauty, with something of Jack Nicholson about it.
The Sicilian and, more specifically. the Palermitano name for this dish is vruócculi arriminati. Vruócculi is dialect for broccoli, but in Palermo and also in Gela, cavolfiore (cauliflower) is often called broccoli. And what about arriminati? I recently came across a list of Sicilian words that are difficult to translate, and arriminati is noted as being closest to rimescolati, which means mixed again or reshuffled, and is used to describe both playing cards and pasta. It is an odd translation, I know, “pasta with reshuffled cauliflower”, but a helpful one, I think, especially if your idea of shuffling is the granny shuffle: that is, to throw them all down and mix wildly. Because, like smash before cucumber or whip before cream, it emphasises the importance of the action. The first shuffle of the boiled cauliflower with oil, onion, anchovy; the second shuffle, of what is now an almost cream, with the pasta.
It is optional, but encouraged, to top reshuffled cauliflower, onions and anchovy with toasted breadcrumbs. The best way to toast them – either fine dry crumbs or softer ones – is to do so in a frying pan with two tablespoons of olive oil and a good pinch of salt over a medium-low heat. Use a wooden spoon to move them around the pan until they are lightly coloured and smell like digestive biscuits. Even with crumbs, this dish is not meant to be pretty, but freeing pasta, and actors, from that pressure is a good thing.
Pasta with cauliflower, onion and anchovy
Prep 5 min
Cook 20 min
Serves 4
1 large cauliflower
6 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, peeled and sliced
Salt
4-6 anchovy fillets
30g currants (optional)
30g flaked almonds or pine nuts (optional)
5 saffron strands
400g short pasta – bucatini, casarecce, mezze maniche, fusilli
50g breadcrumbs
Trim and break the cauliflower into large florets. Cook them in well-salted, boiling water until just tender – only just, because they are going to cook further in with the other ingredients. Lift from the water and set aside, keeping the water for the pasta.
In a large frying pan over a medium-low flame, warm four tablespoons of olive oil and the onion and salt, stirring until the onion is soft. Add the anchovies, currants and almonds or pine nuts (if using), and cook for a minute more.
Add the cauliflower, stir, then add two ladlefuls of the cauliflower cooking water and simmer for five minutes. Dissolve the saffron in a little cauliflower water and add this during the last minute, stirring so the mix goes soft and sauce-like.
Bring the cauliflower water back to a boil, add the pasta and cook until al dente.
Meanwhile, in another pan, toast the breadcrumbs in the remaining two tablespoons of olive oil with a pinch of salt, until golden brown and smelling like digestive biscuits. Put the cauliflower mix back on the heat to warm through, adding some pasta cooking water if it seems dry.
When the pasta is al dente, drain or lift it directly into the cauliflower pan, and toss and swish so the ingredients come together. Divide between plates and top with the toasted crumbs.
