Last week we talked about making pasta sauce with all of the tomatoes out of the garden. Now, you can make spaghetti or another pasta dish, but with all the talk around the blog about eggplant parmesan, I decided to take my own approach to the classic dish.
I pulled one of each kind of eggplant from the garden. Sliced them up and prepared to get cooking! I wanted to bread the eggplant, but not with traditional breadcrumbs…they tend to get too soggy very quickly so instead I chose Japanese Panko bread crumbs. These are bread flakes rather than crumbs and remain lighter when cooked.
I began with an egg wash and seasoned flour (with salt and pepper); I put them through the egg wash again and then coat them with the Panko crumbs. I fried the eggplant in 350 degree oil, and then drained on a paper towel.
To make this dish a little different, I chose Asiago cheese rather than parmegano reggiano since the parm cheese is too flaky to hold up being stacked. I used a fluted biscuit cutter to shape the cheese, then stacked it with the eggplant. I then served it with the heated sauce I made the night before. The great thing about the panko is that it kept the eggplant nice and crisp throughout the whole meal….delicious!
Happy Gardening!
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