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Based on your experience, I think I would continue to salt eggplant. It's really not very time-consuming, because you can let it drain while you do other things.

I treat eggplant almost like meat. I put a very thin film of oil in a pan and heat it very high, then sear the eggplant (cubes or slices) on all sides. Then you can put the eggplant aside and incorporate it back into the dish at a later point to finish cooking. The film of oil and the searing keeps it from turning into oily mush.

So I checked out the recipe and the associated video on the Cooks Illustrated website. Their eggplant pieces are MUCH larger than yours in the photos -- maybe about an inch cubed.

I made this a week ago and it was delicious. My eggplant cubes were larger than 1/2 inch, but smaller than 1 inch -- maybe 3/4 inch or so. After microwaving and sauteeing they were silky, but not oily and the dish as a whole had a good tomato/eggplant balance. So don't give up on this recipe yet!

I make pasta alla norma nearly every week in the summer-here are my tips:

1. make your slices of aubergine a lot bigger-you want to have their texture there too (like hunks of meat i suppose). I slice it in half lengthways, then make half-moon slices 1cm thick (some of the bigger bits I might then quarter).

2. Don't bother salting, or microwaving-I sear them on a high heat like heather77 does, then put them on a plate and sprinkle with dried oregano.

3. I then fry some crushed garlic, add the aubergine back to the pan, turn the heat up high and put ~1tbsp white wine vinegar into the pan and let it reduce (should take 2 minutes). I then add a tin of tomatoes and let it cook gently for about the same amount of time it takes the pasta to cook (10 mins). I save some pasta water as it may need adding to the sauce if its reduced too much.

4. Ricotta is traditional, but since this is one of my quickest weekday meals I don't always play by the rules. If I don't have any basil I don't worry (it is flavoursome enough, though I never skimp on the dried oregano), and I will use most/any cheese at hand-usually parmesan but I have used cheddar in the past (!) and also feta (with isn't that dissimilar to ricotta when you think about it)-just don't tell an italian!

I've made 2 different versions of Pasta a la Norma over the years -- one traditional with Ricotta salata, and the other less traditional with goat cheese.

Definitely the eggplant needs to be bigger -- mine aren't quite cubes (flatter), but closer to an inch.

While the traditional way is clearly ricitta I've made this dish for a long time with crumbled Feta. Works great.

Rick Stein's version of the dish has yet another way to dry the Aubergine - http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/database/pastawithauberginest_86761.shtml

I made this a couple of weeks ago. I had good luck just piling all of the eggplant onto my microwave tray -- I stopped every few minutes to rotate/toss them as they shrunk down.

My cubes were closer to 1", and my eggplant was nearly 2.5 pounds.

This was my first time using anchovies, and I think they really helped bridge the canned tomatoes and the eggplant taste. But I still felt like the actual dish itself wasn't quite balanced. It's like there was too much pasta to the sauce. The ricotta salata, though? My first experience with it, and it won't be my last. Delicious!

I just made the C.I. recipe---I adjusted the size of the eggplant to 3/4" (based on above rec.). After 10 minutes in the microwave, the eggplant was dry and not too small. I used olives/capers/parsley and increased the peppers to 1 tsp. I thought the recipe was great and the ricotta salata really added that special touch.