The eggplant parm bandwagon

Posted: December 8, 2009 | Author: Alyssa | Filed under: Alyssa | Tags: eggplant | 2 Comments »

This weekend I went to my nephew’s christening.  The party after, at my sisters house, was catered by my sister’s mother-in-law.  Let me tell you, her food is amazing.  I have never had anything that she has made that wasn’t fantastic.  This weekend there was a solid italian spread: rigatoni, sausage and peppers, chicken murphy and….eggplant parm.  Those of you that read us with any regularity know that our lovely Improviser has a bit of an obsession with eggplant parm, so when I tasted this, I knew I had to share it with her/all of you lovelies.  This eggplant is different than the individual serve stuff that most of us are used to.  This is more of a ‘group parm’ situation.  Its pretty simple, and so freaking good, I HAD to get the recipe from her and thus I pass it on to you:

For the Eggplant

1 eggplant (duh)

2 large eggs

flour

seasoned breadcrumbs

vegetable oil

Take the eggplant, cut off both ends and peel it.  Its a little too soft for the peeler so you are just going to have to work on your knife skills.  Then cut it into rounds about 1/4 inch thick.  Dip the rounds in flour, then the beaten eggs, followed by the bread crumbs.  Fry them on both sides in the oil at medium heat until they are golden brown.  Once they are all fried, just set them aside on a paper towel to drain

Make a basic tomato sauce (or use store-bought if thats how you roll).  Once the sauce is ready, you can assemble the deliciousness.  Coat the bottom of a square baking pan with sauce, then put one layer of eggplant slices.

Cover the eggplant with shredded mozzarella, then another layer of sauce.  Do one more layer of eggplant, cheese and sauce, and then put it into the over at 375.  The timing is tricky on this one.  The advice I was given was to bake it until it was pretty dried out so that it is more solid like a lasagna.  I baked it for about an hour, and it was still a little messy, but I really liked it.  

I am tremendous fan of this and I’m thinking its going to be one of my staples.  Tonight was perfect too because it started sleeting…so this recipe even made Ohio better, which is really saying something

Hope you all enjoy as much as I did!

TT