I hail from a carnivorous family. My dad in particular is a master of such meaty classics as brisket and filet and pot roast, while my sister and I are skilled in the art of cooking chicken.
However, this year something interesting happened. I moved into an apartment off campus with two friends, and one of them is vegetarian.
Naturally, just because I live with a vegetarian does not mean I have to become one. My roommate isn’t one of those vegetarians who tries to persuade others to join her in her meat abstinence. We live and let live.
But cooking has always been a group activity in my life. From Thanksgiving feasts to weeknight dinners, cooking was a time for my family to gather together and a fun way to pass an evening with friends. I was determined to make cooking together a regular part of life for my roommates and me.
So I bought a vegetarian cookbook. I had never had most of the things listed in it, but the pictures looked awesome, so I figured I might as well give it a shot.
Over the summer, my roommate and I tried out various recipes from this gorgeously illustrated book.
They all sucked.
The proportions were just all wrong. Everything was too strongly spiced or oddly textured or just not delicious. Our products looked just as good as the ones in the book, but we had to struggle through each serving.
Discouraged, we resorted to pasta with tomato or vodka sauce (which is delicious but can get old fast), salads and peanut butter sandwiches.
Disheartened, I discussed this problem one day while I was at home between summer session and the start of fall semester. My mom presented a simple solution.
“Why don’t you guys make eggplant parmesan sometime?”
So that night, my mom and I cooked my first eggplant parm. Why she had never made it before, I don’t know, but it changed my life.
Since then, eggplant parmesan has become one of my go-to dishes. I’ve made it for potlucks, where main dishes tend to be in short supply while everyone busts out the packaged brownie mix, for movie nights with friends and of course for dinner with my roommates.
So, without further ado, allow me to present my delicious, nutritious recipe for eggplant parmesan.
Ingredients:
2 cups tomatoes, chopped
2 eggplants, peeled and sliced
Shredded mozzarella cheese
Parmesan cheese
Basil (I prefer fresh leaves from my own homegrown plant, but you can use dried ones if that’s more convenient)
Flour
Olive oil
Directions:
First, preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
Next, heat some olive oil in a frying pan. While that’s warming up, lightly coat the eggplant slices in flour. I normally just spread flour on a plate and drop the eggplant in it. Make sure to get flour on both sides.
Then you lightly brown the eggplant in the olive oil. You can fit a lot of eggplant into the pan, because it shrinks a little as it cooks. Add olive oil throughout this process as necessary. When the slices are done cooking, set them aside on a plate.
At this point, bust out your baking pan. I like to use a deep one so you can have more layers, but I think this recipe can work with pretty much any standard size.
Put a layer of chopped tomatoes on the bottom of the pan. Follow that with a layer of your eggplant, then sprinkle the top liberally with cheese and basil. I prefer to have considerably more mozzarella than parmesan, but it’s a matter of personal taste.
Then you top that with more tomatoes, followed by more eggplant and then more cheese. Just keep layering until you can’t layer any more. The more delicious eggplant and tomato you can fit in there, the better!
Finally, just bake it for about half an hour. Since the eggplant is already cooked, the important thing is just to get the cheese all melted and gooey and to make sure the dish is warm throughout. The baking also allows some of the juices from the tomatoes to work their way through the dish.
This dish is of course delicious served right away, but also seems to get even better when reheated after a day in the fridge, since it’s had more time to set.
So treat yourself to a vegetarian dinner every once in a while. It might turn out better than you expect.
