Mary Ann's Blog
Eat Like The Leopard
May 1, 2025
In the book Il Gattopardo (The Leopard), Giuesppe Lampedusa describes a fantastic dinner where the centerpiece is a timballo filled with meat, cheeses, spices and pasta all encased in a drum of pastry. This recipe replaces pastry with eggplant, a staple vegetable of the Sicilian diet and used in many ways, even as a dessert, when fried and dusted with confectioners’ sugar!
Assembling the timballo is easy when done in stages. Make the sauce several days ahead; cube the cheese and cook the marble-size meatballs 2 days ahead. Patience is the key to the un-molding; you will get much neater wedges by allowing the timballo to cool for about 20 minutes – and the joy of tasting that first forkful will make all the effort worthwhile.
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