Italian Night!

Last week I hosted an Italian Night at my house with some wonderful friends from college. There was a ton of food that I didn’t get pictures or recipes for, so I’m just going to document the two that I either made or watched be made. (Watched be made? That can’t be grammatically correct.)

I decided to make eggplant parmesan for this. For anyone who has ever made eggplant parmesan, you’re probably cringing right now. It’s an incredibly labor intensive process that generally sucks, and if you mess up the slightest thing, your eggplant sucks. Every time I make it I usually end up standing in front of the stove with a spatula in hand and tears in my eyes. This time was no exception.

Eggplant Parmesan

What you’ll need:
Two medium-to-large eggplants
Flour
Eggs
Dry breadcrumbs (Some people mix grated parmesan in with this, some don’t. Your call.)
Tomato sauce (I used the last of my homemade stuff, but you can definitely use the jarred kind. Interestingly, my cousin Joe came for this meal and recognized the sauce as our grandmother’s recipe, which touched me a little. I may not be as good a cook as Nana, but at least I can make her sauce!)
Grated parmesan
1 pound of fresh mozzarella, thinly sliced
Oil for frying
Basil
Patience
An appetite for punishment

Slice the eggplant into about ½-inch thick slices. Lay them in a single layer on some cookie sheets and sprinkle very generously with salt. Eggplant has lots of bitter juices, and this technique, known as “weeping,” will help to draw them out. Let them sit for an hour. Take a load off! You’ve had a hard day, and it’s only gonna get worse.

After an hour, take note of all the bitter juices that have wept from the eggplant. Ew! Rinse each slice thoroughly with cold water and pat it dry. You are now already beginning to regret making eggplant.

Once it’s all dry, set up an assembly line: flour in one dish, beaten eggs in another, breadcrumbs in the third. Heat an inch of vegetable oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat until it’s really, really hot. I don’t have a thermometer, so I use the water trick that I mentioned before—flick some water at the oil and if it bubbles immediately, you’re all set. Take a slice of eggplant, dredge it in the flour, then the eggs, then the breadcrumbs, then drop it in the oil. “That was easy!” you think. Then you look at the remaining slices to be fried, and inside you, something may snap. Just a warning. So, eggplant really only takes about a minute and a half on each side, and you can do a few slices at once. Just be careful not to overcrowd the pan because too many slices will drop the temperature of the oil and it won’t cook properly. So a minute and a half on each side and then drain on paper towels.

By the time you’re done, your stove will be a mess and you may have wept. But that’s okay! You’re in the home stretch! Spray a 13x9 pan with cooking spray and then pour a little sauce in the bottom (to keep the eggplant from sticking.) Layer slices of fried eggplant, topped with sauce, lots of grated parm, and the sliced mozzarella. Continue layering until all eggplant is covered. Bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes. Sprinkle with fresh basil and eat the fruits of your labors. You deserve it.

This picture sucks, and the reason is that I forgot to get a picture before everyone started eating, and I was all, “Rob, get in here and take a picture of this!” and he looked at me with a mouthful of food and a belly full of booze like he didn’t even know who I was. So I took it, and yes, it sucks.



You know what didn’t suck? Didn’t suck at all? Ali’s appetizer.

Ali's Totally Bitchin' Pita-Veggie-Cheese Masterpiece

She started with a package of pitas, and cut them into triangles. She drizzled them with olive oil and sprinkled garlic powder, oregano and pepper, and baked them at 325 for about 15 minutes or until they started to get brown and crispy (or until she finished her glass of wine and remembered, “Ooh! I have food in the oven.”)

She took the pita chips out and topped them with the following:
One box of frozen spinach, thawed
Artichoke hearts
Sliced mushrooms
Diced zucchini
Roasted red peppers
Shredded cheese mix of mozzarella and provolone

She put them back in the oven for another 10 minutes or so, until the cheese had melted. Then she put them on my coffee table where they proceeded to be devoured. Again, I didn’t manage to get a picture until people had already jumped on and Rob’s hands were full of pita, so you’re stuck with this. Use your imagination!



So good!

Then we filled our already full bellies with Kacyn’s tiramisu and Sher’s Italian love cake, neither of which I managed to get a picture of because I was stuffing my face. I’m really inefficient.

Anyway, onto the ratings. During the meal, I looked over at Rob’s plate. He had plenty of Megan’s delicious spinach lasagna, of Ali’s pita chips, of bread…but no eggplant. I’m like, “Dude, eat the eggplant!” to which he replied, “Hell no!”
I got him to take a bite, which he admitted “wasn’t too bad,” and that he “liked it” but that was it.
I caught Joe picking at Ali’s appetizer long after everyone else had left, and he ended up taking it home in a Tupperware container.
Thus, I give everything 10 hot dogs and to Rob I say, “pfffffttttt!”

Oh and James, bless his heart, made this awesome-looking casserole of polenta, peppers and sausage. I couldn’t try it, because I don’t eat meat (just fish) but it looked really, really good. Unfortunately, this is the only picture I have of it:



It was late in the night and the wine bottles were empty. What can I say?

And It Begins (With a Lasagna)!

I thought lasagna would be a good place to start. Oh my god, do I love lasagna. Lasagna makes me go into Garfield mode, where I dig my hands into the pan and force the food into my mouth as quickly as possible. It’s easy and versatile (I make a bunch of different kinds) and you can pretty much throw whatever you want in it.


Tonight’s was spinach and basil with a bunch of really good zucchini and some roasted butternut squash I got at the Southside farmer’s market. I had made a huge pot of tomato sauce the night before, so I used that with some whole wheat noodles. I always use cottage cheese instead of ricotta. Now, I know this is less-than-authentic, but seriously, when you can put away as much food as much as I can, you have to cut some fat. You know, or else. So anyway.


No real measurements, because making lasagna is just a method anyway.


So, preheat the oven to 350. If you live in a crappy apartment like ours, begin this st...oh, four hours before you want to cook. I’m kidding, mostly. Next, cook those noodles. I know they say you can bake lasagna without boiling the noodles first, but I’ve never tried it and would rather take the time to boil the damn noodles than ruin a perfectly good lasagna.


Okay. Throw a bunch of cottage cheese, an egg and a handful of fresh basil into your food processor. I always put a clove of garlic in this mixture too. Process this until it’s smooth and I promise you, you won’t even miss the ricotta.


Okay, now put a pan on the stove with some olive oil and garlic. Let it get nice and warm. Throw in a bunch of cubed zucchini. Cook it for a few minutes until it softens up a bit. Add a few big handfuls of baby spinach, stir, and remove it from the heat. The hot zucchini will help wilt the spinach. In this step, you could really use any vegetables you wanted: onions, mushrooms, broccoli, peppers, whatever. This is just what I’d picked up at the farmer’s market. At this point, I mixed in the already-roasted butternut squash. To roast a butternut squash, cut it in half, scrape the innards out, cut off the hard outer shell and cube the flesh. Toss with some olive oil and salt and bake it for about 40 minutes at 400 degrees. Anyway, give the spinach a few minutes to wilt, then dump all the sauce you’d planned to use (minus a few tablespoons) into the veggies. Mix that shit up.


Now you’re ready to start assembling.

Spray the hell out of your pan with cooking spray, because lasagna loves to stick. On top of that, spread the reserved tomato sauce.

Okay.

Put down enough lasagna noodles to cover the bottom. In a 13x9 pan, this will be three. On top of that, spread 1/3 of your sauce-and-veggies mixture. Top with 1/2 of the basil-and-cottage-cheese mixture, a handful of shredded mozzarella (or slices of fresh mozzarella, if you’re putting on the ritz) and then top with three more noodles. Repeat the process. On the topmost noodles, spread some sauce, more mozzarella, and some parmesan if you’re into that. This method of layering makes for a more-filling-less-noodle lasagna; if you’re more into the noodles, do it in three layers, using 1/3 of the mixtures each time.


Bake it, covered, for about 45 mintues. Uncover, bake for 10-15 more until it’s all bubbly, and then eat it as soon as humanly possible. Also, drink (cheap red) wine, as we just did with this lasagna.


Voila!


Robbo’s review:



7 of a possible 10 hot dogs. A good score, but he said he liked the full-fat stuff better. That's what I get for forcing him to eat all those vegetables anyway.