What I really like about Italian cuisine, besides having probably the best recipes in the world, is that they keep the tradition alive. They keep traditional recipes and even though sometimes they exaggerate with this defense mechanism, but it all makes sense to me.
Everything that is well preserved and that has been preserved for centuries, has some kind of higher value. When young generations do not give up under fashion and continue with tradition, it is called preserving tradition, keeping it alive.
And you might say that this eggplant dish is a really ordinary meal but in fact it is not. This dish has the perfect combination of flavors, the perfect texture and is simply perfect. It screams Italy from within.
Although I no longer live in Italy, I still have that one part of my love for it, love for that fine cuisine, tradition, food, people, striving for perfection and interweaving art and love in everything. All this is what makes Italy Italy.
This eggplant recipe is a part of their cuisine, a tradition that I wholeheartedly advise you to try.
Ingredients:
4 or 5 eggplants
salt
flour
oil for frying (about 500 ml)
Ingredients for tomato sauce:
from 650 to 800 g of tomato sauce from a bottle
3 cloves of garlic
a little olive oil (about 3 tablespoons)
about 5 g of salt (in case the tomato sauce is not already salty)
pepper
a few leaves of fresh basil
from 400 to 500 g of mozzarella (firm in a piece)
about 150 g of Parmesan cheese
Preparation
Prepare 4 or 5 eggplants, wash them and cut them into rings of equal thickness. The thickness of the cut eggplant should be about 8 or 9 mm.
Salt the cut eggplant and leave it for about 30 minutes to release the water.
In the meantime, prepare the tomato sauce.
Always choose high-quality tomato sauce from a bottle, without additives.
The tomato sauce I use is from the brand Cirio and I have been using a slightly more rustic version of the tomato sauce (Passata rustica) for years.
Put a few tablespoons of olive oil in a saucepan and add 3 cloves of garlic.
Do not put too much oil because we will fry the eggplants, so if you put too much oil in the sauce, your dish will be too greasy.
Saute the garlic only a few times, under no circumstances let it burn.
Remove the pan from the heat and add the tomato sauce.
Add 5 g of salt if your tomato sauce is not already salty. You can check this by reading the composition on the declaration and it should also say how much salt the sauce has per 100 g or ml. Calculate the total amount of salt in the entire bottle and accordingly determine the amount of salt to add (if you need to add it at all).
Season with pepper as desired and cook at a moderate temperature for about 30 minutes. Stir every 5 minutes. When you want to stir, remove the pan from the heat, wait until the sauce stops boiling and only then stir, otherwise the sauce will splatter a lot. At the end of cooking, put a few leaves of fresh basil if you have them. If you don't have any, you don't need to add any other spices.
When the eggplant has released water, wash it under running water and drain it well and dry it.
You can also collect the water from the eggplant with kitchen paper, but in that case you will have a lot of salt left on it.
The negative side of washing eggplant is that it is quite spongy, so it absorbs water.
That is why you should drain it well after washing and dry it well with a kitchen napkin.
Prepare about 500 ml of oil and heat it to a temperature of about 160-170 degrees C.
Roll the dried eggplant in flour, shake off the flour and put it in hot oil.
Fry on both sides until golden brown, but do not let it burn even a little.
You do not need to add salt to the flour and eggplant.
Place the fried eggplant over kitchen paper, dry it from excess oil and place it over a wire so that it does not steam but remains dry.
Prepare about 400 g of fresh mozzarella and 150 g of parmesan.
I recommend fresh mozzarella that is not in whey, because the whey is less suitable for this dish because it is very liquid, which will later result in some of the whey from the mozzarella leaking into your dish and making it too liquid overall.
Put the tomato sauce on the bottom of the pan, arrange the eggplant and put the sauce on it again, put the mozzarella lumps and sprinkle with grated parmesan cheese.
Use mozzarella in a piece and don't buy it grated if you don't really have to.
Continue layering until all ingredients are used.
For the end, leave the nicer and more regular eggplants to make your dish look nice, add the rest of the tomato sauce, mozzarella and Parmesan cheese.
Bake everything at 170 degrees C for 20 to 30 minutes just so that the ingredients are nicely combined and the cheese is browned.
Don't let your cheese burn. As soon as you see that the cheese is slightly browned, take the pan out of the oven.
If you want, put a few leaves of fresh basil on top.
Enjoy this dish.
#parmigianadimelanzane
#italianfood
#eggplant
21 июл 2022
