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It was eCAHN a few days ago who was speaking of this veggie and reminded me of how good it can be if handled properly. As she mentioned, it CAN be like cardboard!
eCAHN, thanks for the inspiration! *G*
However, with some simple care and love, and decent ingredients one can make this dish a heavenly delight!
Ingredients
- Eggplant
- A GOOD marinara (homemade)
- Bread crumbs/panko, whatever
- Seasonings for the crumbs (stick to Italian!)
- Seasoned flour, egg wash
- Ricotta (whip it up to soften and aerate, season if ya want with basil, rosemary, anything)
- Buffalo Milk Mozzerella
- Parmigiano Reggiano
- Fresh, ripe tomatoes of your choice
- Bermuda Onion
Prep
- Peel eggplant and slice into ¾ inch ovals (lengthwise)
- Salt rounds on both sides (sea salt)
- Lay onto sheet pan for an hour
- Drain the liquids (all the acids also leech out!)
- Pat dry with towels or paper towels
- Flour one slice at a time
- Dip in egg wash
- Dip in seasoned bread crumbs/panko
- Saute in half clarified butter/half EVOO
- Brown, remove from pan and set on paper towels to drain
Assembly
- Glass baking dish of appropriate size per volume of eggplant
- Brush butter/EVOO on bottom
- ½ inch layer of marinara sauce
- Lay eggplant down to cover bottom of dish
- Schmear ricotta over eggplant
- Layer sliced tomatoes over ricotta
- Cover with shredded buffalo milk mozzerella
- Layer red onion slices to cover
- Another layer ¼ inch marinara (continue alternating layers, see comments)
- Layer thin sliced Parmigiano Reggiano to cover
- Cover, bake at 375F for 20 min or until hot
- Remove cover, brown cheese on top
- Cool for 5 minutes and plate using metal serving spatula.
- Serve with pesto pasta and garnish with fresh basil sprigs.
Tips
- Use dried herbs to season bread/panko crumbs (add garlic powder)
- Use sourgough, artisan nut breads or your choice of bread
- If fresh, slice or cube, dry in oven and then use processor to grind into crumbs
- I like basil, oregano, rosemary, thyme (add red chili flakes if desired)
- I like to put the herbs to a processor and grind them up finely
- Use fresh chopped basil or rosemary and some garlic in ricotta
- OR; put pesto into ricotta and whip (be light with pesto)
A Thought
Make eggplant sticks, flour, egg and bread and bake or sauté.
But salt them and drain them before assembly.
Various zucchinis and squash can be sliced, salted, drained and handled the same as eggplant parm or eggplant sticks. Baked or pan sauted a great appertizer.
Making a decent marinara is a whole different post in and of itself!
Mangiamo dia bono!
[Photo: The promise of melanzana parmigiana to come! Eggplants! (source: Esteban Cavrico via Flickr)]
20 Comments
Mods, had trouble getting bullet points to work.
Yes, I imported an MS Word Doc cut and paste.
Office For Mac 2004.
Also a space between ‘eggplant’ and the next item in the ingredients list. Nothing I did worked!
Everytime I tried to use bullet point, I got a br result.
It’s ok with me as is, if needs editing, please feel free to do so!
And, if there’s a way I can overcome this issue of cut and past MS Word Doc, let me know, so I can produce a worthy diary up to Seminal edit standards! You folks set a high bar I want to reach up to!
lol
I’ll take a look at it, Larue, no problem.
Please avoid using bold in the head, though; it makes your post less tweetable since the HTML shows up in tweets.
I think what happened is that you may have saved this post before all the bells and whistles were completely added, It often results in br tags instead of p tags in a document.
Thanks Rayne, and roger that bold in the header . . . knew about all caps, but not the bold issue!
I LOVE this town!!
lol
Wow! Great edits and thanks so much for cleaning that up!
So, I should cut and paste the plant MS Word text, then assign bold to my headings (but not title), then assign li, THEN save?
Second question, can I hightlight a whole list of items, and then hit li? Will it cover the whole list with bullets, or do I have to li each and every line item?
I think it’s best to use a very stripped down offline editor for writing posts — like Notepad — and if you’re worried about losing your work, save it as a .txt file first. The .txt format strips out all the hidden coding that word processing programs embed that you can’t see.
Unfortunately, I do think you have to use the li tags on each line item, so you’ll have to highlight each individual line and not a range of lines to apply the tags using the Seminal’s editing system.
And after all this work, I’m going to run it on the front page here, so it needs a nice graphic. I’ll use a pretty collection of eggplants because so far I cannot find a publicly-licensed picture of eggplant parmigiana which will do this recipe justice. They don’t look bad, they just don’t look as delicious as this must be.
That recipe sounds delicious; I’m going to give it a shot.
Thanks! Let us know how it turns out, what you add/eliminate, and such!!
Always love your work Mas . . . thanks for all you do at FDL!
Nice pic Rayne and thanks for front paging!
I WAS gonna use a pic, but got a bit frustrated with the formatting issues so I blew it off.
Thanks for ALL your help with this one!
Hmm, .txt file . . can I save an MS Word doc to .txt and get the same result?
This is summer in a dish! As soon as the temperature breaks, I’m turning my oven on and getting to work. I think that I’ll add bunches of fresh basil and tiny meatballs, hmmm.
We’re all available for sampling, ya know.
*G*
Geez, amongst all the editing issues I failed on, I left where the Parmigiana Reggiano goes!
In Assembly, after the top layer of marinara is added, there’s where ya put the shredded Parm Reg.
Then, start with another layer of eggplant, and repeat.
Geez.
It’s The CHEESE, Larue!!
lol
Ok, I’m just butchering this whole thing today.
In assembly, NO provolone! That’s the Parm Reg . . .
And one can use a deeper baking dish and repeat layers!!!
DOH!
It’s a wonder I got the eggplant into this recipe . . . .
LeSigh.
Okay, just stopped back in and saw your comments; I’ve changed the provolone in assembly, inserted instruction to continue alternating layers and to see comments.
Hope that worked!
Sending virtual carrot and chocolate chip XMAS loaf my sweetie bakes every XMAS.
Along with fav pot of Java, various sugary confections, and unlimited Merlot for life.
Thank you SO much for all your work on this.
I am DETERMINED never to have to bother you again!
And thanks again for the tech info. We’ll see if I can get an MS Word doc (unformatted of course, as was mine) to play nice with Seminal Editor if I don’t save first, BEFORE I add Seminal formatting.
*G*
larue — front paged! to think i knew ya when…
The credit all goes to Rayne!
My hero for sure!!
*G*
And good morning to ya, ma’am!!!
I just made a very similar eggplant dish last week. The last of it is heating up in the oven right now. I also put in lots and lots of mushrooms, and some nice sweet italian sausages. Buoni spuntini!
Nice!!
Thanks for the comment!
Mangiamo!
Wow!
This sound good, but since I found baba ganoush and Julia’s mushroom/onion (I add spinach) recipe, I have switched gears on ichibahn. The simpler, the better.