Taganu d'Aragona

It's no secret that we LaFasto's have Italian (actually Sicilian) heritage coursing through our veins (okay, well, not my veins, but I felt left out, so just go with it)...For as long as I've known Alex, he's told me about this dish his mother used to make, a recipe from their Great Aunt SiSi, the family's recipe keeper and first-rate cook, called "tano". For years and years it remained shrouded in mystery, until one day last week, Alex was finally like - "You are making me 'tano', and that's final!" I set out to Google to see if I could find some recipes from other families for it, and actually discovered the true name of the dish is "Taganu D'Aragona"; someone in Alex's family must have nicknamed it somewhere along the line. Hehe.

A well-coiffed Martha Stewart I am not...

The beautiful cheese!

12 eggs...just try not to think about it! So delicious.

Hands at work

I'm not sure why I am making this weird face! Layering on the sausage...

Ready for the oven

Finished product...

Real "Tiganu" has eggs, rigatoni, ground beef, a red gravy, and a cheese called Tuma, that is so hard to find, I didn't even bother looking for it! Ha! For this version of Tano, which Alex wanted to take for a breakfast meal, I used gluten-free pasta (Sam Mills ROCKS the gluten free pasta, y'all! Seriously!!!), fontanella, mozzarella and provalone cheese, ground chicken sausage, and eggs. While it was a modification of the true Sicilian specialty, it was nonetheless DELICIOUS, and made Alex very happy!

The history is that it is a tried and true Sicilian recipe, served usually only on Good Friday every year, and it actually originated in the same town that Alex's family hails from, Agrigento. I love learning stuff like that. I am excited to make it again, maybe even breaking with tradition and having it at Christmas time, with the red gravy, making it the more traditional way. I love to incorporate our different heritages at the holidays, it's kind of a tradition I started for us a few years ago. This will probably fit in very well! It is hot, rich in flavor, and just downright scrumptious! Also, super easy and fast!

Buon Appetito!