Eggplant

Caponata is one of the great Sicilian vegetable dishes, often eaten as a relish alongside pork roast or fish. The eggplant-based recipe features a wonderful sweet-and-sour taste, one of the hallmarks of Sicilian cooking—a combination of sugar and vinegar that provides a tingling push-and-pull sensation in the mouth. In my family, we often ate caponata as an antipasto, spooned over toasted bread, and used any leftovers for wonderful sandwiches. It can be eaten hot, cold, or at room temperature, making it the ultimate vegetable dish for a casual party.

Eggplant Parmesan is one of the classic red-checkered-tablecloth Italian-American recipes, but I prefer this slightly easier and lighter recipe, with a very similar concept—combining eggplant with cheese and marinara sauce. This makes an elegant, satisfying side dish as well as a great entrée for a vegetarian meal (make sure your vegetarians eat dairy, though—there’s lots of it here). You could also make this dish with zucchini.

Roasting brings out the best flavors in fall vegetables, and it’s a super-easy way to cook them, as well: just cut them into cubes and let the oven do the rest. Once puréed they become a warm, mellow sauce that collects in the tubular pasta, so that when you bite one the flavors explode in your mouth.

When my family and I made trips back to Italy to visit my grandfather’s family in Naples, his sisters often made one of these impressive timbales. It looked a bit plain on the outside, but when you cut into it, it was always filled with a delicious mixture, and as a kid I thought it was just so cool. I still do.

With its Old World flavors and tempting aroma, this versatile dish is a big hit at potluck suppers. Depending on whether you use the main recipe or one of the variations, you can create an entrée, a one-dish meal, or a side dish from the same basic ingredients

I’m offering you the basic recipe for filling these eggplant rolls. You can take it in any direction you like, adding spinach, raisins, pinenuts, prosciutto, or whatever else sounds good to you. Eggplant rollatini are versatile in another way, too. Because the individual rolls are easy to serve, they are wonderful as a first course for a big crowd—like a family gathering—or as part of an Italian-American buffet. For a smaller crowd, this makes a substantial main course that needs only a first-course salad to make it a meal. If you’d like to make these simple rolls even easier to fill, you can cut the sticks of mozzarella into little cubes and stir them right into the ricotta filling.

When I bread and fry things like these slices of eggplant, I make a little assembly line that leads from the flour, to the eggs, on to the bread crumbs, and right into the pan of hot oil. Placing three rectangular cake pans side by side next to the stove works nicely—there is very little cleanup afterward—but any container wide enough to hold several slices of eggplant at a time will work just as well. This dish can be made with roasted eggplant slices instead of breaded and fried eggplant. Although it will be good, it will not be as tasty, nor will it have the texture of the fried eggplant. The roasted version is very simple: Drain and rinse the eggplant as described above, but instead of coating the eggplant slices, toss them with a few tablespoons of olive oil. Brush a baking sheet with olive oil, and set the eggplant slices side by side on the baking sheet. Bake them in a 450° F preheated oven for 20 minutes, till they are golden brown. Let them cool, and proceed to layer and bake the ingredients as below.

The title of this dish, alla sorrentina, means it comes from Sorrento, across the bay from Naples. You may have had this dish prepared with mozzarella cheese, which is the cheese of the area, but I am showing you an alternative way here, using Fontina. Use whichever you like, and whichever you can get. By the way, alla sorrentina is a good indicator that the dish you order will contain eggplant in some form or another. If you prepare this dish without the eggplant, you’ll have scallopine alla bolognese. You can add a little elegance to the dish by straining the sauce as you spoon it onto plates. That is something I do in my restaurants. But in my home—and most likely in yours—the sauce is just fine the way it comes out of the baking dish.

To keep them both intact, add the little “pockets” of ricotta and the eggplant pieces just before serving the pasta or turning it into the baking dish. It is one of the nuances in cooking that make a difference. When you take a bite of the finished pasta, you’ll get little bursts of different tastes, which you wouldn’t enjoy if the eggplant pieces were broken apart and the ricotta was mixed in with the pasta. If you choose to bake the pasta, make sure the pasta is well moistened when it goes into the baking dish—the heat of the oven will dry it out a little. You can toss little pieces of mozzarella or Fontina cheese in with the pasta before adding the ricotta and eggplant if you like. Just make sure the consistency of the pasta stays fluid and creamy.

Sometimes I peel eggplants completely, sometimes not at all. Leaving the peel on adds a slightly bitter taste—which I like—but also helps the eggplant hold its shape after you cut it into cubes or slices. If you want the best of both worlds, remove thick stripes of peel from the eggplant, leaving half the peel intact. Caponata can last several days in the refrigerator and is even better after marinating for a day. It is best eaten at room temperature, so remove it from the refrigerator about 2 hours before serving. Caponata is usually served as part of an antipasto assortment, although it makes a wonderful summer contorno, or side dish, to grilled meats or fish.

This is for the pasta shunners out there who still find themselves pining for a big, gooey serving of lasagna. Nothing can really replace the toothsome texture of fresh pasta, but given the amount of “bad” carbs a serving of pasta contains, it’s understandable that some choose to avoid it altogether. Thin slices of zucchini and eggplant stand in for the pasta in this lasagna, made with fat-free ricotta and low-fat marinara sauce. It all adds up to a truly delish alternative to traditional high-calorie lasagna.

Who would have thought those thin little crepes filled with ricotta and baked in red sauce and cheese could be so diabolically caloric? The fat in the ricotta, the fat in the mozzarella, the fat in the Parmigiano-Reggiano, and even the fat in the olive oil—it adds up quickly. A typical serving has about 46 grams of fat and more than 900 calories. With a few clever swaps, I got it down to just over 8 grams and 200 calories. A few meals like this, and you’ll be into your little black dress in no time.

Leaving a little skin on the eggplants will add color and texture to the dish. The small, firm eggplants are not too bitter and when they are firm, they will not soak up as much oil, so they do not need to be salted and pressed. However, if you leave all the skin on, especially when you use baby eggplant, the skin overpowers the flavor of the flesh and the texture is too tough, overall.

No bread crumbs, plus it’s not deep-fried! You could eat a mountain of this eggplant parm and not have to loosen your belt.

Caponata is an eggplant dish normally served as a relish or appetizer, but I am so fond of it that I keep reinventing ways to add it to each cookbook I write. I’ve topped polenta with it, tossed it with pasta, packed it into sub sandwiches, and now, here we go again . . .

I love this dish, Pasta alla Norma. Traditionally, it is made with 1 whole cup of EVOO and lots of chopped baby eggplant. It’s good, but if you don’t find just the right eggplant to use, the dish can be greasy and bitter. The recipe below is a take-off on Norma that includes all the same elements, but it is never bitter and uses much less oil (making Norma’s figure a little better!).

We love the complex flavors of this puree. We like to serve it with the Twice-Cooked Scallops (page 25). It also goes well with salmon, turkey, corned beef, and the Root Beer–Braised Short Ribs (page 226). The smokiness gives the mixture a rich meaty taste and enhances the sweetness of the dried fruits. Rest assured, though—even if you don’t have smoked fruits, you can use the regular dried version and still enjoy something special.

In the movie Ratatouille, the rat made a tian of eggplant and other vegetables, set vertically in a baking dish. A similar dish came down in the family of Gérard Monteux, whose ancestors have made this dish since tomatoes came to Provence. The keys to the recipe are to make sure that the tomatoes and onions are of the same diameter as the eggplant, and to use a square or rectangular baking dish. I have made it in a French tian, but you can use any pan about 9 inches square. Good any time of year, it is spectacular in the summer, when tomatoes are at their best.

Eggplant came to Europe from India sometime around the eighth century, possibly with seeds carried by Jewish merchants. Often called the Jew’s apple, the eggplant has played an important role in Jewish cooking since early times. The old recipes found in the Vaucluse, such as the Ladino almodrote de berenjenas, are present today throughout the Sephardic world in the Mediterranean. Although the eggplant is sometimes sautéed in this dish, I prefer roasting it over a fire to bring out the smoky flavor, and then chopping it into chunks with two knives, a technique I learned from Sephardic French cooks. You can also roast the eggplant in an oven then pulse it in the food processor. With the increasing number of vegetarians even in France, this dish is becoming very popular, “modernized” with pesto, crème fraîche, or anchovies, or covered with tomato sauce. A purist, I like to serve it the old way—simply, with a salad.