Tioga Herald

Cooking: Family Parmesan

My mother made a great zucchini parmesan. When I tried the recipe for the sauce in an eggplant parmesan, I sued Mom’s recipe. I followed the combined instructions from The Kitchen on Food Network and America’s Test Kitchen. Together with Mom’s recipe for the sauce, plus a few added extras, the result was a good one.

The recipe called for breadcrumbs. I have often used cracker crumbs to replace dredging mixtures calling for breadcrumbs. For this recipe, I replaced the dredging mixture with Cheez It cheese cracker crumbs. With other recipes, I have also used saltine crackers and Ritz crackers; used chocolate crackers or cookies to make a “pie” crust for cheesecake. At Thanksgiving and Christmas, Mom always made a broccoli casserole. For the topping, we crushed Cheez It crackers in a plastic bag. I still do it this way, but a food processor could also be used.

ATK and Food Network recommended a method to remove the bitter flavor from eggplant. Their recipes called for more than just one eggplant. Cooking for two people, I used only one medium eggplant. (Even one eggplant is too much for two people). The result was to peel the skin off the eggplant, slice into half-inch slices, salt the slices on both sides and leave the eggplant in the salt for an hour. After sitting for an hour, wipe the salt from the slices, placing three plies of paper towels on both sides and squeezing the liquids out of the slices. This also makes for a more firm eggplant after baking.

Once the eggplant was ready to cook, I coated them in a mixture of crumbled Cheez It crackers. The cracker crumbs were mixed with garlic powder, onion powder, dried thyme, salt and pepper. With the crackers for dredging, I also used two other “dredging” mixtures. (1) 1 egg mixed with 2 tablespoons almond milk (dairy milk could also be used) and (2) 1 cup all-purpose flour and 2 tablespoons corn starch.

Note: since I was using only one medium eggplant, the amounts for dredging were adjusted.

Dredging the eggplant slices in this order: (1) flour mixture, (2) egg mixture, and (3) cracker crumb mixture. Fried in half-inch of peanut oil (or any oil with high flash point). (Note: our son gave us an air fryer for Christmas; since we had already purchased a gallon of peanut oil, we still had to use the remainder of the oil; otherwise, I would have used the air fryer).

Because I am a diabetic, I often add more protein to a recipe. Eggplants have very little protein. I cooked 1 pound of bulk sausage (ground beef, turkey, chicken, or lamb could be used; we had sausage, so used it;I do the same with the zucchini parmesan following my mother’s recipe).

Additional proteins were from the cheeses: ricotta, sliced mozzarella, and grated gruyere. (Note: I use gruyere to replace parmesan or pecorino romano because it has less salt; I check salt / sodium levels). Also available to me was a bag of boiled eggs marinated in beet juice. Since this is called “egg”-plant parmesan, I thought it might be neat to add real eggs as protein.

Mom’s recipe for the sauce is simple and easy to remember.

• 1 small can tomato paste

• Olive oil – filling the empty tomato paste can

• 1 tablespoon dried basil

• Salt, pepper, garlic & onion powders to taste

In addition to this sauce, I also added Rao’s marinara sauce.

To put it all together, the following steps were taken:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

After frying the coated eggplant slices, the ingredients are put together in a casserole dish:

• eggplant slices

• added to each slice: boiled egg slice, dollop of ricotta cheese, mozzarella slice

• fill around eggplant slices with meat (I used ground bulk sausage), tomato paste / basil sauce, and additional marinara sauce to fill in

Bake in oven for 45 minutes to 1 hour or until bubbling and toppings begin to darken.

Enjoy! Ooooooh so good!