Sicilian style spaghetti with eggplant

I am sorry for not posting more. It has been a while and there's been a lot going on. I've been cooking a lot, just not posting so often.

Over the weekend, I was in the mood for a good spaghetti dinner.  I picked up an eggplant and some Pecorino Romano cheese. This is a very simple meal, of fried eggplant and spaghetti, but it really hits the spot. Two tips for making this sauce, use San Marzano tomatoes, and don’t cover the saucepan. Also use your very best olive oil. The few simple ingredients really shine in this meal. Here is how I prepared it.

A medium eggplant

1 cup of flour

Onion salt 

Extra virgin olive oil

2 cloves of garlic, smashed and minced

Half teaspoon of red pepper flakes

28 oz. can of San Marzano tomatoes

12 basil leaves

1 cup of shredded Pecorino Romano cheese

Spaghetti, cooked and drained

Preparation

About an hour before you start cooking, Wash the eggplant and slice it in quarter inch slices, lengthwise. Salt both sides of each slice and set the slices in a colander. Place a lid on the slices, and set a couple tomato cans on the lid. Let the eggplant drain for about an hour.

When the eggplant is about 45 minutes into its rest, empty the tomatoes into a bowl, and use your hand to break them up. Heat a medium saucepan, and add enough olive oil to give a heavy coating. Add the garlic and red pepper flakes. Let that sizzle, but don’t brown the garlic. After about a minute add the tomatoes and stir. Let that gently simmer, uncovered, while you cook the eggplant.

Place the flour in a zip lock bag, and sprinkle in some onion salt. Rinse each eggplant slice, and pat it dry. Heat a medium cast iron pan and add about a quarter inch deep of extra virgin olive oil. Shake an eggplant slice in the flour and add it to the hot oil. Add enough slices to fill the pan in a single layer. Brown the eggplant on both sides, and drain them on a paper towel. Repeat with the remaining eggplant slices.

Chop and add the basil leaves to the tomato sauce. Put your spaghetti on to cook. While the spaghetti is cooking, turn the heat off the sauce, and sprinkle on half of the Pecorino Romano cheese. When the spaghetti is al dente, you are ready to serve.

Serving

Place a mound of spaghetti on your plate. Add eggplant around the spaghetti. Cover the spaghetti with lots of sauce, and sprinkle on the remaining shredded Pecorino Romano cheese. I just had this with some olives and a nice Rosso wine.

Cheesy baked eggplant

Over the weekend, I invited my neighbors over for dinner. I made a simple garlic marinara sauce, a loaf of homemade white bread, a pizza style anchovy bread, sausage and peppers, and this baked eggplant.

Why do people find this scary?

Many people look at eggplant as a mystery. What the heck do you do with that strange purple thing? This is a great way to solve that dilemma. 

The secret to eggplant is using good olive oil, which will impart its flavor on the eggplant. The other secret to this recipe, is to use good imported Italian Provolone, Pecorino Romano, and Italian San Marzano tomatoes. With ingredients like that, how can the eggplant not taste good?

1 large or two smaller eggplants

Lots of salt

Extra virgin olive oil

4 large cloves of garlic

28 oz. can of San Marzano tomatoes

5 large basil leaves

White pepper

1 cup fo flour

Italian Auricchi Provolone

Italian Pecorino Romano

Shredded Mozzarella cheese

Preparation

An hour or two before you plan to cook, peel the eggplant, slice it lengthwise, and cut those slices in half. Heavily salt both sides of the eggplant slice, and set it in a colander. Repeat until all slices are salted and stacked in the colander. Place a plate on top to weight them down, and set the colander over a bowl. This will drain the bitterness out of the eggplant. You’ll be surprised how much liquid comes out.

The tomato sauce for this is very simple. Place about a half cup of very good olive oil in a medium sized sauce pan and heat it. For goodness sake, don’t measure, just guess. Peel the four garlic cloves, and smash them with the blade of a metal knife (one loyal reader did this with one of those expensive porcelain knives, and broke it). Add the smashed, but still whole garlic cloves to the oil. Now don’t brown the garlic, but as it sizzles, remove it from the heat, swirling it, return it for more sizzle, and so on, until the garlic softens. Remove and discard the garlic.

Place the San Marzano tomatoes in a bowl, and using your hands, squeeze them, and break them up. This way, they still have more texture than regular sauce. Add this to the hot oil and bring to a simmer. 

Take the five basil leaves, stack them, roll them up, fold the roll in half, and slice that razor thin with a sharp knife. Add the basil to the tomato sauce. Taste and adjust the sauce for salt and pepper. Turn the heat off.

Wipe the salt off the eggplant slices, and set them on a plate. Heat a small cast iron pan, and add about an inch of extra virgin olive oil. Place the flour in a bowl. In batches, rub each slice with the flour, and fry them in the oil. Turn them over, and when it is nicely golden brown, set it on a plate lined with paper towel. Repeat until all the slices are fried. Grate about a cup each, of the Provolone and the Romano.

Spoon a little of the tomato sauce into a baking bowl, or small casserole pan. Add half of the eggplant and then top that with more sauce, and half of the grated Provolone and Romano. Add the rest of the eggplant, the rest of the Provolone and Romano, the rest of the tomato sauce, and top that with about two cups of shredded Mozzarella cheese. Press the shredded cheese down, so it gets down into the sauce. Bake at 390º for about thirty five or forty minutes, until the sauce is bubbling and the cheese is browned.

Serving

What a meal! Pasta with a garlic tomato sauce, cheesy baked eggplant, fresh bread, anchovy bread, sausage and peppers, olives, and lots of wine.