The Food Table, Preserving the Italian American Kitchen, Illustrated Recipes and history of Italian American Foods with Personal Memories Eggplant Parmesan

Eggplant parmesan was a frequent Friday night, meatless fare in our Italian American kitchen. Eggplant parmesan conjures many memories. The smell of the eggplant and the sound of bubbling oil crisping the delicate sweet eggplant flesh still fills my nose and rings in my ears. Sometime in my childhood my father brought home a Ware Ever electric skillet. I can see it ever so clearly. It mesmerized.

The black plastic legs and black plastic lid knob set off the silver sheen of the metal. The plug-in electric cord and temperature regulator in its soft and shining pristine black plastic casing and white numbered dial entranced my sight a and seduced my touch. The lines of the skillet curved gracefully. You wanted to hug it in your hands. The invisible geometric arc that curved from the rounded square lid down and out to the extended and delicate black plastic feet enthralled my young eyes.

Here on our kitchen counter was the modern world. It was the world we had just seen at the New York World’s Fair. We were modern. My mother used that skillet for everything that called for frying. My father used it to make Sunday breakfast: first the bacon and scrapple, then setting them to the side to drain on a paper towel, he made the pancakes. Sunday breakfast was his specialty. On Shrove Tuesday, it was the hot oil bath of fasnacht doughnuts. On Christmas Eve it served up the fried crabs cakes and scallops. The Ware Ever electric skillet was at the heart of our kitchen.

In summer countless eggplants were sacrificed on the altar of that skillet. Eggplant was cut into rounds or into spears. The eggplant slices were coated with egg and flour and breadcrumbs and submitted to bubbling hot oil. No sooner were they on the cooling rack then we attacked: hovering vultures intent on their victim. I don’t know how our mother had anything left to use for dinner. Fried eggplant, direct from the fryer, are a sweet, mellow, creamy delight like no other. We devoured them.Odd to tell, of all of us, our mother, to this day, does not care for eggplant.

Melanzanne alla parmigiana, La storia.
(History of the dish.)

In the Italian American kitchen eggplant parmesan was a staple. Its history is rather curious. As with many dishes the Italian American version is not the same as the recipe in Italy. Eggplant was developed in Asia and came to Southern Italy with the Arabs in the 9th century. The rest of Europe did not know of eggplant until well into the 17th century. It arrived with the advent of the tomato from the New World. Early eggplants that found their way to America were smaller, white and egg shaped: hence the name. The Italians call them “melanzane” and the French and English call them “aubergine.” And in some Southern Italian dialects they are known as “mulignana,” a term that in America, because eggplant has a dark skin, has come to be a racial epithet http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=mulignan.
Eggplant parmesan is the ancestor of many dishes including chicken parmesan. Like its descendants chicken and veal parmesan, eggplant parmesan is a standard of the tradition red sauce Italian American restaurant. I would venture to say that the parmesan family of dishes is among the most requested in traditional Italian American restaurants: a favorite of Italians and non-Italians alike.

In these venues, the dish is usually something of a pool of red sauce with either the eggplant or the chicken or the veal hidden somewhere beneath an elastic covering of mozzarella. The thing I have found curious about this dish is that it has nothing to do with parmesan cheese or with the city of Parma. My curiosity led me to do a bit of research on this recipe and the results were most edifying.

9th c. Arab map of Sicily

The video below is from Google Saudi Arabia. The videois all images so you don't have to speak Arabic. The recipe suggests the relationship of the Italian to the Arab dish.
بَاذِنْجَان

Other sources suggest that the word parmesan derives from the Sicilian word “palmigiana,” “slatted shutters” and suggests the layered slices of the eggplant.This explanation is all the more plausible when you note that many recipes in Italian are not called “melanzane alla parmigiana” (eggplant parmesan) but “parmigiana di melanzane,” (parmesaned eggplant.) In other words, to “parmesan” something means to set it out in receding layers.

Sliced lengthwise like shutter lattice - from: http://azzurratagliaecucina.blogspot.com/2011/09/melanzane-alla-parmigiana.html

As I have just mentioned, Italian recipes call for the eggplant to be sliced on its length. My mother, and I think many others, sliced the eggplant on the round. With the rounds, assembling the dish did not lend itself to the criss-cross Italian method that gave the dish its name. In our house, the rounds were stacked in layers of sauce and cheese. In that way, each serving was pre-set and each person received a stack of rounds, something like the way you serve pancakes.

The other big question with eggplant is that of salting and sweating. In the recipe I offer here, I follow the traditional method. But, it must be said, that there are no small number of cooks these days who contend that the process is pointless. Perhaps they are correct. They probably are. But, it’s always good to know the tradition before we cast it away.

The first printed version of the dish appears in Vincenzo Corrado’s “Il Cuoco Gallante,” Naples, 1786. But this version does not use tomatoes, but only butter and spices.
The version we know today is first in print by Ippolito de Calvalcante’s ,”Cucina teorico-pratica”, Naples, 1837. The exact origin and meaning of the name of this dish is lost in history. What can be established however, is that the original dish is based on eggplant.

While if we follow most Italian recipes, and if we ascribe to the history of the dish as a “shutter slats” then you would slice the eggplant along its broad side and set up the dish in a casserole form in a baking pan, just as you would the related “moussaka.” In our house, however, my mother always cut the eggplant in rings and stacked them in a little tower. My mother added another touch. If it were not Friday, she would usually stir the sauce into ground beef for between the layers.
I found this Italian website that shows the “shutter” version and the stacked version.
http://www.dissapore.com/grande-notizia/la-ricetta-perfetta-parmigiana-di-melanzane-napoletana/

What you need

Equipment
Rack for draining
Wok or large skillet
Baking pan

Ingredients

Eggplant
Whole tomatoes (Cento San Marzano)
Cheese: parmesan, scamorzza, or mozarella.
Garlic
Salt
Pepper
Olive oil
Red wine
(for the frying)
Breadcrumbs,
Eggs
Milk

Preparing the eggplant
Tradition calls for eggplant to be salted to release its bitter liquid. Today, some cooks skip this time consuming step.

Slicing

In keeping with my mother's method, I slice the eggplant on the round.
If you look at recipes of Google Italy you will find that they cut the eggplant lengthwise. Since lengthwise allows for the shutter slats arrangement, it is clearly the more authentic.

Salting

Set the eggpplants on a cookie rack set over a cookie sheet pan.
Sprinkle with salt on both sides.

Weight

Set a another cookie sheet over the salted slices.
Set what you can on top of the sheet to add weight.
The weight will help to push out the bitter water.
Let this sit for about an hour.

Breading

In the meantime, set out three bowls or other flat containers.
Bowl 1: whip two eggs and some milk.
Bowl 2: flour
Bowl 3: bread crumbs

Drying the eggplant

After an hour, remove the weight on the eggplant.
With a paper towel dab off all the remaining moisture.
You will see the a good bit of water had accumulated in the lower pan.

Coating

Dip each slice in the three coatings,

First: flour
Second: egg
Third: breadcrumbs

Set the slices back on the rack.
NOTE: Italian recipes do not use the breadcrubs. I do find that just the flour and egg prevents the slices from becoming mushy.

Tomato Sauce

Crush the tomatoes by hand.

Simmer tomatoes

Heat some olive oil in a wok of other large pan.
Add some garlic.
Add the crushed tomatoes.
Season with salt, pepper and basil.
Add other spices according to taste.

Fry the eggplant

In a wok or other large sauter pan, heat the olive oil until it ( around 300 degress,bubbles when you drop a garlic clove into it. Do not let the oil become too hot.
Fry the breaded eggplant slices until they are golden brown.
NOTE: Italian recipes use deep oil.

Layer the eggplant: Traditional Italian American

Set out the eggplant in stacked layers and alternate with the tomato sauce and the cheeses.
Bake at 350 for about 45 minutes.

Melanzanne alla parmigiana, La storia.(History of the dish.)