Parmigiana di melanzane

This entry is a little out of order. It's supposed to come after the Roubouchon recipe but before the Patricia Wells recipe (second time around). Benjamin was pretty busy at work at the time so I took an executive decision to make (what I knew was one of his favourites) Eggplant Parmesan from one of his cookbooks, called Soffrito! I find it difficult to really do much of any cooking while looking after the Monster, but I had decided I would make this during her nap. Because surely she would take a long nap. And even though her naps are in the afternoon, this dish is designed to be eaten at room temperature. Not straight out of the oven. Perfect. Slight problem: it was MUCH more convoluted than I had thought it would be - not to mention Evelyn decided she was only going to sleep for about an hour that day. So I had hardly got stuck in before babysitting duties commenced again. Hmmm.

So as this was done a few weeks ago I remember now that I had to fry the eggplant slices in several batches. I remember Evelyn tugging at my trousers to play and I remember being worried about the eggplant spitting grease and burning her so I was trying desperately to get her interested in something else. Anything other than sitting or standing near me while trying to fry all those eggplant slices - and man, there seemed a lot. Anyway - in the excitement of it all I completely forgot to take pictures. Doh! But I can imagine it went something like this. Slice your eggplant:

Then fry those perfect slices in several batches without burning your baby:

Construct your layers of eggplant, tomatoes, mozzarella, provolone, basil and parmesan. I looked on the internet for someone in action doing this but struggled so you'll just have to take my word for it. Here is what the final product is supposed to look like (picture taken from Soffrito): 

Although I didn't take any pictures of the process my husband was on the ball enough to take a picture of the end result after we'd eaten half of it.

Let's face it. I am pretty honest because it could have been sooooo easy to put something like this up:

Anyway, it was pretty darn good and I'd definitely want to do the dish again. However I REALLY didn't enjoy the skin of the eggplants at all. I had to remove all the skins so as to enjoy the dish. Which was a bit of a pain really. Apparently one can't remove the skins before frying because then the eggplant would fall apart. Not sure how you get around this but that would be my only major complaint. 

Oh! I can't believe I almost forgot to put up a picture of the wine we had that evening. I will have to leave Ben to talk about the merits of this wine but I can tell you I enjoyed it very much.