Baked eggplant with tomato, mozzarella and Parmesan cheese.
This recipe is from Twelve, a Tuscan Cook Book by Tessa Kiros. I made it yesterday with just-picked eggplants and fresh garlic from my garden.
Ingredients:
3 medium eggplants cut into 3mm (1/8")slices
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
5 ripe tomatoes, skinned and chopped, or 400 g (14 oz) tin of peeled tomatoes, chopped
about 10 basil leaves, roughly torn
flour for dusting the eggplants
olive oil for frying
300 g (10 1/2 oz) mozzarella cheese, cut into 5 cm (1/4") slices
50 g (1/2 cup) freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Directions:
Cut the eggplant slices and put them in a colander. Sprinkle with salt and leave for about 30 minutes to allow the bitter juices to drain away
Preheat the oven to 180C (350F)
To make the tomato sauce, heat the 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a saucepan. Add the garlic and as soon as you begin to smell the garlic, add the tomatoes and half of the basil. Season with salt and pepper, and simmer for 15-20 minutes, or until the tomatoes have melted into the sauce
Rinse the eggplant slices and pat dry with paper towels. Lightly dust both sides with flour. Heat enough olive oil to come 1cm (1/2") up the side of a saucepan. Heat the oil and fry to eggplants in batches until golden brown on both sides, adding a little more oil if necessary. Transfer them to a plate lined with paper towels to absorb the oil.
Spoon a little of the tomato sauce into a square or round oven dish of roughly 30 cm (12"). Cover with a layer of eggplant slices. Add a few spoonfuls of tomato sauce, then a layer of the mozzarella cheese slices. Add the remaininbg basil leaves. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. Repeat to use up ther ingredients. Put into the hot oven and bake for 20-30 minutes or until the top is lightly golden and crusty. Cool slightly before cutting into servings. Serve hot or at room temperature.
Serves 6
Modifications: I had to double the tomato ingredient to follow the cooking directions. I used Roma tomatoes - perhaps a larger variety would have solved the problem.
How was it?
Deeelish! I'll make it again in about a week when I can use fresh tomatoes, along with the eggplant and garlic, from my garden.
Yeah, it was pretty good. Next time I think I'll try to speed up the eggplant-frying part by using a deep fryer with a couple of inches of oil instead of the half-inch called for in the recipe.
This is the first recipe I've tried from the book - plan on trying a few more in August using the bounty of my garden as much as possible. I'll let you know how they turn out & will try to remember to take a photo.
She wrote another book that takes recipes from her family (middle Eastern) and from her husband's (Italian). Called Falling Cloudberries that is a million times better than Twelve. The link is for Amazon US as I don't know if there is a Amazon Canada and the only affiliate link from Slowtrav to Amazon is the US one.
This is almost the exact recipe I use, but I've started grilling the melanzane rather than frying it. I brush the slices with a little olive oil before grilling it. This method uses much less oil than frying so the end result isn't as oily.
Posts: 767 | Location: Virginia (but still missing Naples!) | Registered: 05 October 2005
kevin, I have an almost religious belief: if you don't fry the melanzane, it's not parmiggiana. It can be a decent dish, but NOT, absoluteny and by no means, a parmiggiana.
By dusting the melanzane with flour and deep frying them (if you don't have a fryer, use a smallish saucepan with qhite high sides, to keep the oil from sprying: smaller diameters means more depth to the same emoount of oil) in really HOT fat (almost to the point of smoking) the melanzane will be completely dry, not soaked at all.
Alice, I agree that the fried version is usually better, but the grilled version does not have to be dry if you brush it liberally with oil on both sides while you grill it (and remember, I'm using the term "grill" in the outdoor American "barbecue" sense of the word) and perhaps add a little more tomato.
Perhaps my problem is that I've never mastered the art of frying melanzane without it being soggy since it will absorb as much oil as you give it even with the flour coating. It tastes great but I don't need that much oil in my diet.
Posts: 767 | Location: Virginia (but still missing Naples!) | Registered: 05 October 2005
Make the fat hotter. This is the only secret in frying. And, again, a "pasticcio di melanzane" made with grilled eggplants can be tasty. it's just NOT a parmiggiana. So let's use its real name. ^_^
Kevin, I'm going to borrow Jonathan's special moderator hardhat and say that I, too, like grilled eggplant in eggplant parm.
I will also go as far as to admit that last month, while in Florence, I realized that I had to make dinner for more people than I'd planned on. We had 2 packages of frozen grilled eggplant slices. I layered them with a nice tomato sauce, topped off with 2 or 3 mozzarella balls diced, and grated parmigiano. No complaints. No leftovers. And everyone seemed to be calling it melanzane alla parmigiana. (I was the only non-Italian.)
The fact that most Italians calls that melanzane dish "parmiggiana" does not mean that it is. Any self-respecting neapolitan, Pugliese or Sicilian (the regions where the dish has its roots) would adamantly refuse to call it thus. Don't forget that parmiggiana is a regional dish: the fact that it's imitated throughout Italy does not make it any less regional. Most Italians even mistake the name. It's "parmiGGiana", not "parmiGiana". It has absolutely no relation with Parma: "parmiggiana" is a Sicilian word that indicates a type of door, and that's where the dish derives its name: the fried melanzane slices (battered or floured in Campania and Puglian, without any addition in Sicily) are superposed the way the plansk that make this kind of door are.
I do not dust the eggplants, just dry them really well with kitchen paper after the salt treatment and just before dipping them in the hot oil. You really need more than one inch oil. Then I put them in a colander for half a day so lot of the oil drips off. You also want pretty thick slices, 1.5 cm. It is still a heavy dish but it has to be enjoyed in small amounts and with plenty crusty bread on the side to mop the juices.
I fry the eggplant the way my Nonna from Foggia and my mother taught me. Dip the eggplant in beaten egg mix and then Italian breadcrumbs. Progresso is the best if you don't want to make your own. The Italian breadcrumbs gives the eggplant a nice tasty coating. Fry in EVOO and then drain on brown paper bags. The paper bags do an unbelievable job of soaking up the oil.
Posts: 1107 | Location: Laguna Beach, CA | Registered: 09 February 2006
Notice please that in Italy breadcrumbs are stale bread¹, dried at room temperature until hard and brittle and grated with a Parmigiano Reggiano grater. Fullstop.
¹ Bread must be plain: flour, yeast, salt and water. unsalted bread may also work. No fats, no sugars, no flavors no nothing added.
Who gives a flip about how the eggplant is cooked or what kind of breadcrumbs you use, if something tastes good? I make a version of moussaka that would probably make some Greeks roll their eyes, but it tastes good, is much lighter, and I call it: Moussaka. My home cooked version.
Not to get off track but if someone wants to use frozen grilled eggplant or store bought crumbs (even - horrors - PANKO CRUMBS) or heck, put peas in the dish, who cares what they call it?
It would be a boring world indeed if everything was made exactly the same way.
Alice -- I doubt anyone here is claiming to be a "purist". We're just some folks sharing our favorite recipes whether they be American, Italian, Italian-American, or whatever. If they are authentic, almost authentic, or unauthentic is not an issue. To make it an issue by being so critical is not in keeping with the spirit of Slow Travel posts.
Capisci!!!
Carole
Posts: 1107 | Location: Laguna Beach, CA | Registered: 09 February 2006
Would you call William Shakespare "Stephen Holdsticks"? I agree with Shareon that if something tastes good than it's good, but then it should not be called with a name that is not its own name. As I said several times, one can make a "sformato di melanzane" with grilled eggplants (IMHO it's slimey and not particularly tasty, but then I beleive that grilled eggplants or aubergines are a devil's creation to trouble or taste buds): if you like it, goa ahead and eat it. It will not poison you and you will derive great satisfaction from it. Your problem, or virtue if you prefer. The point is that you can't call it a parmiggiana, because it's not. You may call "parmiggiana" a dish made with fried zucchini or with fried artichokes; they would both be "parmiggiana", but the one trait that singles out the parmiggiana is that the vegetable used for it _must_ be fried. You can skip adding the tomato sauce, use a different combination of cheeses, use egg, but the vegetable must be fried, or it's not a "parmiggiana", since parmiggiana is a dish of vegetables first fried then layered with cheese and other ingredients and finally baked. Go ahead, invent a potato parmiggiana or a cauliflower parmiggiana: but call it parmiggiana only if the vegetable is fried and layered with cheese, than baked.
I think what some of us are trying to say is...we got what you said ages ago - I carefully read all your postings regarding your concerns about the misnaming of the eggplant dish.
However, I think maybe most of us aren't really worried about it -with all the things that truly should concern a human being, this is far from one of them.
As far as I know this is a site to share and discuss ideas about food. I may be incorrect but I don't think it is fair play to criticize people's taste or techniques - it's rude and reeks of snobbery. I hope we are allowed to have different tastes on this site without being fearful of being put down or told that we are deluded.
I'd also like to know who exactly should be coated in breadcrumbs and fried - Shakespeare or Holdsticks?
Topic Closed
and say that I, too, like grilled eggplant in eggplant parm.
