The eggplant: It sits there in the vegetable aisle, dark, foreboding, impenetrable. What are you supposed to do with that thing? Somehow Italian restaurants transform it into the uber-delicious eggplant parm hero, but the novice chef throws up his hands and reaches for the good old broccoli instead.
Fear not, novice chef, I'm here to help, with a recipe for baked eggplant that is as easy as slice, bake, top, and eat.
Alot of eggplant recipes start out with the following directions: "Slice eggplant, put slices in a colander, sprinkle with salt, let sit for 2 hours, rinse, and pat dry".
WTF? Who has time for that? I must have ADD, but any recipe that involves leaving something alone for more than 30 minutes is too long. Knowing me, I would do the first step and then completely forget about the eggplant and find it two days later, resplendent with mold. So I have always skipped this salting step, which is supposed to prevent the eggplant from having a bitter taste, and have never found my cooked eggplant bitter at all. I now feel vindicated in skipping this step and confident in passing on this tip to all of you in blog-land because I just found the following on Wikipedia:
Salting and then rinsing the sliced eggplant (known as "degorging") can soften and remove much of the bitterness though this is often unnecessary. Some modern varieties do not need this treatment, as they are far less bitter.
Ha! I knew it! If you see any recipes for eggplant involving this step, go ahead and skip it. Veggielicious and Wikipedia say so.
Anyway, on to the recipe. Actually, not yet. I could teach you how to make pizzeria-style eggplant parmesan, which involves breading and frying the eggplant. I used to make that all the time, but stopped for a few reasons:
-it's messy and time-consuming to do the breading;
-watching the eggplant soak up massive quantities of oil as I fried it freaked me out, as I am diet-conscious and don't want to eat 4 tablespoons of oil for lunch;
-baking the eggplant turns out a dish that is just as flavorful, but lighter and much easier.
So, the recipe:
-Take your eggplant and slice it into rounds about a 1/2 inch in thickness. I've found that cutting them thinner gets better results. If you have a thing against the skin you can peel it off, but I like it and we all know that vegetable skins are good for you, especially dark-hued ones.
-Salt the slices and leave them in a colander for 2 hours. Just kidding! Eggplant joke!
-Prepare your baking sheets (aka cooking sheet): If you have a pastry brush, use this to brush some olive oil on the sheet to prevent the eggplant from sticking.
If not, pour on some olive oil and spread it around with a paper towel. You could probably also spray it with cooking spray.
-Next, lay the eggplant slices out on the baking sheet. Brush the tops lightly with oil if you have a pastry brush- if not, use a paper towel, and make a note to buy yourself a pastry brush. Put some black pepper on top.
-If you have a red bell pepper in your fridge, wash it, cut it in half, and put it skin-side up on the cookie sheet along with the eggplant. If not, don't worry about it.
-Cook the eggplant for about 25 minutes. When it's done it will look like this:
-Get out a baking dish, around a 9x9 brownie-pan like dish is fine. Put some pasta sauce on the bottom of the dish, then a layer of eggplant, then some Parmesan cheese. If you cooked the red pepper, remove what you can of the skin, slice into thin strips, and put it in with the eggplant. You can also put in thin slices of onion, and some sliced garlic if you're not making this dish for a first date.
-When you are done layering the eggplant, sauce, and Parm, you can top it with mozzarella cheese. I didn't do this last time because I didn't have any, and didn't miss it.
-Bake this in the oven at 400 for 20 minutes. In the meantime, boil some spaghetti.
Serve the spaghetti topped with eggplant and an extra sprinkle of Parm. Tell your friends it is 'Spaghetti melanzana', which means 'spaghetti with eggplant' but sounds fancier.
Variations: I bet this would be great served in a toasted hoagie/sub/grinder roll, but I've never tried it. If you're a low-carber, you could eat this straight up, with no pasta or bread. I had it last night with nothing, but it was more satisfying with the spaghetti.
Bon appetit!
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