Salad of Fusilli with Eggplant, Ricotta & Raw Tomato

A room-temperature pasta salad can be a welcome entrée in hot weather, provided it is kept simple. Tossing the hot pasta with raw tomato, fine olive oil and basil is about as easy as it gets, yet this dish is very satisfying. I recall eating such a salad on a hot summer’s night at Armando Percuoco’s Pulcinella Restaurant in the early 1980s. Armando cooked the linguine rather al dente and tossed it with tomato full of summer sunshine.

My recipe calls for thin fusilli [meaning ‘spring