Cheesy eggplant

I was in my local Italian grocery the other day. I went to purchase the makings for a spaghetti sauce. As I walked through the produce section, I spied a big beautiful eggplant. I thought of all the cheese I have in the fridge, and had to buy it. Here’s what I did with it.

1/4 cup buttermilk

2 eggs

1 cup of flour 

Cajun seasoning

Garlic salt

1 eggplant

1 eggplant

Olive oil

Sea salt

Fresh ground white pepper

Asiago cheese

Aged Provolone Cheese

Shredded mozzarella cheese

Red pepper flakes

Preparation

Heat a large cast iron skillet. While that is heating, take a bowl and put the eggs and buttermilk in it. Beat the eggs. In a plastic bag, add the flour and sprinkle in some garlic salt and some cajun seasoning. Peel the eggplant and slice it into slices (lengthwise) that are somewhere between a half, and a quarter inch thick. Put the micrometer away, guess. Cut the long slices in half.

One at a time, dip the eggplant slice in the egg mixture and then into the bag of flour. Shake the slice in the flour. Before you place the first one in the skillet, add about a quarter inch of olive oil into the hot skillet. Add the first eggplant slice to the hot oil. Repeat until the skillet has all the slices it can hold in a single layer. As the slices brown on the bottom, turn them over. 

When the first slice is browned on both sides, remove it to a pie plate. As you take one out of the skillet, replace it with a new, dipped and shaken, slice until all the slices have been browned and are in the pie plate. As each slice goes in the pie plate, add a slice of asiago cheese to it.

Sprinkle the pie plate with a little salt, and lots of fresh ground white pepper.. Add a bunch of sliced aged provolone. Don’t ask how much. Kind of a lot. It is called cheesy eggplant for a reason. I didn’t measure this and I don’t expect you to. 

After you have a good amount of asiago and provolone cheese on the hot eggplant, cover the eggplant with shredded mozzarella cheese. Put enough on to cover the eggplant, but not so much that it overflows the pie plate. You want cheesy eggplant, not a cheesy oven. Just in case, set the pie plate on a cookie sheet.

Bake the eggplant at 375º for about a half hour, until the cheese is nicely browned and everything is bubbling. Let set for about five minutes before serving.

Serving

You want to serve your cheesy eggplant as a side dish to a pasta with tomato sauce. I served mine with an Italian spaghetti made with Polish sausage. What I did was to place a big helping of the eggplant on the plate next to a big pile of spaghetti. I then smothered both with tons of the sauce (with lots of sausage). 

Along with that, I had a plate of mixed Italian olives, fresh homemade bread and a bottle of Chianti to wash everything down.