Random Thinking

I mentioned earlier that I am now a vegetarian thanks to Beth. One of the tricks of being a vegetarian is to find good food that keeps you from missing meat. I was at Whole Foods earlier this week when I spotted beautiful eggplants so I grabbed one although I had no idea how to cook it. I ended up improvising a recipe so I thought I would share it.

I decided on eggplant parmesan but all the recipes I found called for frying the eggplant. First, I am trying to avoid fried food and second, eggplant absorbs everything so if you don’t do it right you end up with an oily, soggy mess. So I decided to try just baking it in sauce and seeing how that ended up.

Before you can cook the eggplant, you have to prepare it which is the most tedious part of making eggplant. Eggplants are like sponges and before they are cooked they need to be drained of some of the water inside of them. Start by peeling the skin off the eggplant. The purple skin is very pretty but it is also a little bitter. Remove a bit from the top and bottom and then slice the eggplant into 1/4″ slices. Place the eggplant in a colander making a single layer. Sprinkle a generous helping of salt on top (don’t worry – we will wash the salt off later). Continue making layers and sprinkling them with salt. Place some paper towels on top and then place some plates on top of the paper towels. If you have light-weight plates then you might want to add some extra weight. Now go and watch TV for an hour or so.

When you come back, if you left the colander sitting on the counter, you will notice a nice puddle of eggplant water all over the counter and probably the floor. So clean up the mess, remove the plates and the paper towels, and rinse off the salt from each slice of eggplant squeezing out any extra water. Put aside.

Get a large Corning Ware baking pan. Open a can of Scalfani Crushed Tomatoes (it is by the far the best) and put some in the bottom of the pan. Add some crushed garlic and a few basil leaves (we buy fresh and freeze them). Now make a layer of eggplant. Add some more crushed tomatoes, garlic, and basil. Make another layer and repeat until all the eggplant has been used. Add the remaining crushed tomatoes. Remember the rule for basil leaves… there is no such thing as too much. Top with a layer of mozarella cheese. Cook at 350 degrees for about 30-45 minutes.

The end result was the tastiest eggplant parmesan I have ever eaten. Give it a try and let me know what you think. Or discuss this recipe and give advice for improvements.

Tags: cooking, eggplant, vegetarian, Scalfani, tomatoes, basil