Directions: |
Directions:Slice tops off of eggplants to check on thickness of the skin. If the skin is particularly thick, peel the eggplants. Cut eggplant into ½ inch thick slices. If you find the bitterness of eggplant distasteful, sprinkle the eggplant slices with salt, let rest in a colander for about an hour. Then rinse with water and pat dry. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Put 3 tablespoons of olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. When oil is hot, dredge eggplant slices, one at a time, in flour, shake off the excess flour, and place in the skillet for 3-4 minutes a side until browned. Fit as many slices of eggplant in your skillet at a time as you can without crowding them too much. Season with salt (if you did not salt the slices before cooking) and pepper. Once cooked on both sides, let eggplant slices rest on paper towels. Add more oil to the skillet as needed Lightly oil a baking dish, then spoon a small amount of sauce into it, spreading as evenly as you can. Top with a layer of eggplant slices, followed by a thin layer of mozzarella and Parmesan, and topped with some basil leaves. Repeat the layers in this order until all ingredients have been used except for the basil and Parmesan you set aside for garnish, and add these last. Bake for 20-30 minutes, or until bubbling hot. |
Personal
Notes: |
Personal
Notes: Though the designation Parmigiana implies being from Parma, the dish is claimed by both the Southern regions of Campania and Sicily. Most other Parmigianas Chicken etc. are variations of this eggplant dish mostly by overseas Italians. Though Eggplant Parmigiana does not itself make the very top of my favorites, the many different eggplant dishes my mother made taken together puts eggplant near the top of my favorites. This was reinforced when we went overseas to the Sudan via (London) Paris, Rome and Athens (& Cairo) where we delighted in eggplant dishes Aubergine in French, a term also used in other languages including English for eggplant. In the Sudan, we regularly ate an eggplant dish not too different from my mothers cooking. When I started going to Asia in the 1970s, to my delight I encountered wonderful eggplant dishes in India, Thailand, China and of course Bangladesh (where we lived in 1988) and Indonesia (where we in 1991-1992) made with those tall thin Asian varieties. In Indonesia, our cook had many ways of fixing Terong (eggplant), all of them delicious. She knew our liking and fixed them often. We have several eggplant cookbooks including - The International Eggplant Cookbook Shirley Smalheiser, E & E Publishing, 2016 but they are used to check to see how our eggplant dish is made and what is in it and not as a recipe to prepare it. In India, Brinjal (eggplant) is the second largest vegetable after onions in spite of the crop being regularly ravaged by the Brinjal fruit and shoot borer (Leucinodes orbonalis) making it nearly impossible to find undamaged Brinjal in the marketplace. In spite of being recommended as safe by the appointed scientific committee, a genetically engineered (rDNA) Brinjal plant was successfully blocked by the anti-science forces many of which are funded by anti-science, ideological NGOs based in Europe and North America. In neighboring Bangladesh, successful cropping of the engineered Brinjal along with its Solanaceae Family member, the potato (which has become the number one vegetable) and a chain of refrigerated warehouses is set to significantly improve the diet and health of the Bangladeshi population. Technical note - Eggplant (Solanum melongena) is a member of the Solanaceae Family or the deadly nightshade family which includes tomatoes, potatoes, and peppers. Its origin is considered to be India and/or somewhere farther east in Southeast Asia where it continues to grow wild. This spiny, bitter, orange, pea-sized fruit was domesticated, transformed becoming eggplant and has been cultivated throughout India and China for more than 1500 years. The alkaloid Atropine is one of the active ingredient in nightshade. Belladonna (beautiful lady in Italian - Atroba belladonna) with its pretty flowers and foliage and red berries is a perennial herbaceous plant in the nightshade family Solanaceae, which includes tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplant. It is native to Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia. The sweet tasting red berries are extremely toxic when ingested by humans (but not to the animals on which they depend to eat and disperse them) containing Tropane Alkaloids - Atropine and Scopolamine. After centuries of use as a killer of killer of kings, emperors, and warriors throughout history, it has found a multiplicity of uses in modern medicine obviously in small control doses. It was successfully prescribed for me when I returned from the Sudan with a spastic colon. It is another example of the adage in toxicology that "Dose makes the Poison" (Latin - Sola dosis facit venenum or for its use as a medicine - "The right dose differentiates a poison from a remedy) attributed to Paracelsus (nee - Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim). All things are poisons, and nothing is without poison, the dosage alone makes it so, a thing is not a poison. (Alle Dinge sind Gift, und nichts ist ohne Gift, allein die Dosis macht dass ein, Ding kein Gift ist.)
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