Cooking with Amy’s Eggplant Parmesan

Eggplant is a vegetable, er, fruit, that is often overlooked. I can understand why. Order an eggplant dish in a restaurant and you’ll likely get a fried, oily, mushy mess. But cooked properly, eggplant is creamy and earthy, even a tad sweet. The key to cooking eggplant is to first pick a young eggplant. If it looks healthy and feels heavy for its size, you’re probably good to go. Young eggplants have less seeds, which is what gives the eggplant its bitter taste. Even in a young eggplant though, you’ll still have some seeds. Salting the eggplant slices, or dices, and letting them drain, will remove the bitterness as well as moisture. Then, toss the eggplant with a bit of olive oil and roast in a hot oven until the flesh breaks down. The result? Utter yumminess.

I like Amy’s Eggplant Parmesan recipe because she knows what’s up. She bakes her eggplant slices (vs. the standard fried), and she makes her own sauce. Hooray! I dislike fried food, but I especially dislike fried eggplant. I find the texture creepy, and the end result is, as I said above, an oily, mushy mess. Bleh. I’ve never once made eggplant parmesan with fried eggplant. I’ve always baked mine. I have to admit I’m a bit partial to my recipe, but Amy gets huge points for freshness and flavor. Love that carrot and celery in the sauce!

Head over to Amy’s blog, Cooking With Amy, and get her recipe. Click.

On a final note, the picture I took of the dish was out of focus. Thankfully, there is Wikipedia Commons, where I found this lovely image. Here’s the link.