Eggplant Parmesan, Salsa is not Spaghetti Sauce
Posted in Main Course, Recipes on April 4th, 2009 by JTI belong to a CSA, where every Saturday they drop of a bag of fresh produce from the farm at my front door. What I receive in that bag every Saturday informs what I will be cooking for the next week. I find that it forces me to be creative and use ingredients I wouldn’t normally use. Recently I got an eggplant, so my mind immediately went to either ratatouille or eggplant parmesan, since I had fresh pasta and some pecorino in my fridge I decided on eggplant parm.
The problem was I didn’t have spaghetti sauce or the ingredients to make it (I usually make it, garlic, basil, oregano, crushed tomatoes, red wine.) Looking in my fridge I realized that I did have an abundance of fresh salsa from the deli section of my grocery store. I looked at the ingredients, tomatoes, onion, green chile, then a bunch of, contains less than 2% of… I thought, mistakenly, that I would be able to transform this salsa into a pasta sauce. I sautéed onion, garlic and a little carrot, added the salsa, added massive amounts of basil, sundried tomatoes, oregano and garlic salt. Brought the whole thing to a boil then simmered for 45 minutes. The whole house had the wonderful smell of pasta sauce, but for some reason the tomatoes in the salsa never broke down, they stayed hard little dices (how unripe would they have to be to maintain this structure?) and most importantly they never lost their acidic zing that says “salsa.” It tasted like spaghetti sauce with a bunch of lime juice added. In the end I had to go out and buy the ingredients to make a fresh batch of sauce.
Eggplant Parmesan
1 Eggplant
Salt
8 oz pasta
Pasta sauce
2 Eggs
Breadcrumbs
Flour
Olive oil
Pecorino or Parmesan
Fresh parsley
1. 24 hours in advance slice your eggplant and salt liberally on both sides, place on a baking sheet with paper towels on both sides and place another baking sheet on top. This forces some of the liquid out of the eggplant and removes some of the bitter flavor it can have.
2. Fill a large pot with water and really salt the water. I always heard it should taste like sea water, and my pasta never tasted great until I realized just how salty the water should be. If you use enough salt then your pasta will taste great plain. Bring the water to a boil.
3. Set up a breading station. 1 plate with flour on it, 1 plate with the 2 eggs beaten, 1 plate with a mixture of the bread crumbs and some of the parmesan. Bread your eggplant slices, into the flour, into the egg into the breadcrumbs.
4. In a pan, pour enough olive oil to cover the bottom of the pan. When the oil starts to shimmer add in the slices of eggplant. Cook until golden brown on one side, then flip. Once they are cooked on both sides set on paper towels to drain. They should be crunchy on the outside and creamy in the middle.
5. When your water is boiling add your pasta, I am lucky enough to get fresh pasta from a local source so the pasta cooks in 1 minute.
6. Drain the pasta
7. Assemble the dish – Pasta, Sauce, Eggplant, Cheese, Parsley
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Thanks for visiting my web page. Yes, this is my standard pizza sauce…it is excellent.
you know what kept those tomatoes chunky and acidic?? all that less than 2% crap!! ADDITIVES!
go natural!! it would have worked fine most likely had it been natural….
though most salsa does have vinegar in it…
I make a killer eggplant parmesan…and the secret extra ingredient is SPICY ITALIAN SAUSAGE in the sauce….take the sausage out of the casing of course….and brown it like ground meat before adding it to the sauce.
so in any case it’s not the traditional “real thing,” but hell, I’m Italian and learned all about variation from my dad whose only redeeming qualities were that he was an awesome cook and taught me how to love food.
oh and I’m jealous of your Saturday delivery of veggies…though we do grow our own for about 6 months out of the year!!
First off, you always have amazing presentation. I look like I’ve just slapped together something, threw it on the plate, and handed it to some homeless person in a soup kitchen. I need to work on that.
The picture above, does it have the salsa-sauce or the one that you ran out and picked up?
It looks quite good!
@Coleen – Thanks for stopping in as well. When I do my next pizza, I’ll give it a try. The search was tough.
It’s the stuff I made, I never put the salsa stuff on, never tasted right.
I wish I had the space to grow my own but I live in a tiny little place in densely populated chicago, I usually only have space for a window herb garden in the summer.
For anyone who may not be able to grow there own, here is a great site to find a CSA in your area.
http://www.localharvest.org/
I am a big believer of the phrase “you eat first with your eyes”
Oh, this can be taken so many ways….
The Cook’s Illustrated people bake the eggplant instead of frying it. I like the results: less greasy and more even cooking.
I’ve never done this dish with pasta…I’ve always layered the eggplant together (after baking the eggplant separately) and assembled it like a lasagna. The pasta approach is interesting…
Hi Allen! Thanks for stopping in.
What is the consistency of the baked eggplant post baking? Does it dry out easily?
mmm….I’ve baked and fried…and I definitely prefer frying!! I like the richness, even if it is heavy on the fat!!
Baking it simply doesn’t make as much of the flavors come out in my experience…though I suppose with more experimentation and perhaps baking it longer it might work…I like frying it until its a deep brown color…
what do you do when you bake it??
Allen, have I ever made you the above dish with sausage?? it was a standard dish I made for guests for a long time…
This approach first salts, then breads, then bakes the eggplant slices. As I recall some oil is put on the sheetpans before baking so there’s a slight fry-like effect.
In my experience it comes out light and crisp and browned. I was happy with the amount of moisture left in post-baking–crisp breaded outside with tenderness inside.
I’ve never made eggplant parmesan in your style ever, so I’ve never made it with sausage. I have made my lasagna-like version with various additions, such as Italian sausage bits. Since all the components of my lasagna-like dish are pre-cooked (or safe uncooked) I’ve found that a variety of pre-cooked ingredients can be added as the moment’s imagination desires.
The addition of oil makes perfect sense looking back at it. My big fear was that baking would dry out/toughen up the eggplant.
well when I baked it I sprayed both sides with olive oil…and still didn’t really like the outcome…BUT…again, I like the heavy richness of frying it. I like fat!! Though I don’t indulge often….when I make this I do!!
I make a pseudo-eggplant parm. that goes well with salsa. I do it when my hubby is making chicken parm (or something similar) so some of the ingredients are already on hand.
I prepare and bread the eggplant (more or less) the same as you (for the middle step, I use 1 egg, some skim milk, and a few shakes of hot sauce and a spoon of italian dressing, and for the last step I mix the bread crumbs with corn meal instead of cheese).
Here’s where it goes different… I arrange the fried eggplant slices in a baking dish almost like a lasagna with eggplant instead of noodles. I sparsely sprinkle the bottom of the dish with breadcrumbs first, then spoon a little “sauce”. I don’t use an actual pasta sauce, I just steal a few spoons of crushed tomato when my husband opens the can to start whatever he’s cooking. And I shred a little mozzarella and a sparse spoon of crushed-tomato between layers. I am very stingy with the cheese and “sauce”. The final result is dry compared to eggplant parm, but dry in the sense that it lacks internal sauce and cheesiness, not in a “dried out” sense. I bake it quickly and serve it in pie slices (like a quiche or a pizza).
On top of that, I spoon homemade salsa.
And here is the major major meal planning difference that leaves you NOT missing pasta sauce… I serve it with risotto instead of pasta. Sometimes on the side I have a cucumber sour cream sauce or a cucumber yogurt sauce for the risotto. So it’s like a generic Mediterranean smorgasbord in the end. But in that context, the salsa pairs very nicely with the eggplant instead of like a failed substitution.
Hi Alice!
Thanks for stopping in. The risotto with the dish sounds like a nice side, which I’m sure gives it a nice, rich, flavor all around.
Again, thanks for stopping in. Please do stop in again.
Best!