My grandmother Bernice, my dad's mom, used to love going to Olive Garden to eat their eggplant parm...to the extent that it became a bit of a family joke. "Where should we take Grandmother to eat?"..."Olive Garden"..."What do you think she'll get there?"..."Eggplant parm"...
On our last trip to Costco they had these bags of baby eggplant, 4 to a bag, and they were so pretty under the warehouse lights that I knew I must have them. And what can you do with eggplant besides parm? (actually, we have another very tasty eggplant recipe, but it's still a variant of the parm)
Yep. We have all that.
My wife lived in Italy for a year and is normally in charge of the pasta sauces and marinara in general, but tonight I took on the task. San Marzano tomatoes are always a good place to start.
I sliced up a couple of the baby eggies - these filets were a little less than 1/2 inch thick. I salted them a bit to sweat on each side, and wiped away the sweat. At the same time, I started some red onion and garlic in a sauce pan with olive oil and pasture butter, then chunked in the tomatoes to simmer a bit.
For the eggplant, I dredged it in egg+milk+flour and fried it in hot canola oil. Breadcrumbs are probably more authentic, and I had none! So flour it was. After a good bit of frying (an inserted fork pulled out cleanly), I set the 'plant on some paper towels to dry a bit, and grated some parmigiano reggiano on top.
The sauce was all steamy and bubbly and garlicky. I added some salt and pepper - a taste from the spoon revealed an unexpected sweetness! (my wife reminded me about basil, so we dropped in some of these frozen basil herb nuggets we found at the organic grocery)
I warmed a baking dish a little and then ladled in a base layer of the sauce...
...and then the fried eggplant filets (they
almost fit in the dish without overlapping). Then I spooned some more sauce on top, added some slices of fresh mozzarella, and put it all in the oven to get warm and gooey.
And then it was time to serve it up! While it may not compare well to the Olive Garden's version, ours turned out to be pretty tasty.
