April: Best Eggplant Parmesan
With a wedding in New Orleans and Passover both falling this month, we got April’s dinner party in just under the wire. I decided to take advantage of this dinner party falling on the last night of Passover, and really celebrate carbs. I had been toying with the idea of a grown-up spaghetti-o recipe, but with two vegetarians coming over, I wanted to put together a menu where they could eat (almost) everything. And then this month's Bon Appetit included a celebration of red sauce Italian, and I just couldn't resist.
I decided to plan the meal around their "best" eggplant parm recipe and live out my red checkered tablecloth dreams. With comments like "Took a lot of time.... but well worth it. Thanks!" and "This took some time but worth it." and "Start to finish, this was a lot of work.", I figured the rest of the meal should be as simple as possible, and it seemed like a great opportunity to try Smitten Kitchen's recent recipe for foolproof cacio e pepe. (I am not one of these people who thinks you can have a parmesan of any sort without a side of pasta, particularly after 7 days of Passover.) To add a little green into the menu, I added Italian salad, garlic bread (with lots of herbs), and a garlicky broccoli rabe. I farmed out hors d'oeuvres and dessert to FreshDirect, ordering assorted antipasti and Italian rainbow cookies.
Given that Bon Appetit readers thought the eggplant parm was a lot of work, I figured it would definitely be a lot of work for me, and I got right to it as soon as I got up on Saturday morning. The recipe has you start with the sauce, and I think it's a great sauce recipe to have on its own (a little chopping, but then the oven does most of the work). With my sauce roasting away, I prepped the eggplant (of course, I had ordered about half as much eggplant as I needed, so I ran out for more and during this errand, I couldn’t help myself and picked up way more flowers than needed — 3 of 5 arrangements pictured below).
While the eggplant detoxed, I made salad dressing for the Italian salad. This recipe bills itself a lot like the Iacono recipe I made in January, but is way less precious. In this recipe, you make the dressing, you toss it with things — instead of carefully soaking and layering and refrigerating as Iacono dictates. I'm not sure which one I like better, but I thought this came out really really well and is a lot less work.
During this time, I also got my butter ready for the garlic bread, made the cacio e pepe paste and prepped the broccoli rabe. Then I battered the eggplant slices and fried them. Given how much eggplant there was to fry, and how many slices could fit in my pan at a time, this was quite a process. After the first few batches, I started cleaning our apartment and doing dishes while I waited for the eggplant to cook.
With all of the eggplant ready to go, I finally got to stack the parm and put it in the oven. The recipe calls for baking the parm for about an hour covered, then putting fresh mozzarella on top, baking it for an additional 15 minutes, and then letting it rest for 30 minutes before cutting into it. I wanted this out of the way early so I wouldn’t have to worry about it, so I decided I'd do the first part of the baking early in the day, and then the second part just before everyone arrived. This all worked great (see photo above) until Nick came home, touched the parm (after it had already baked for the second round) and asked if I was going to heat it up before we ate. I tried to explain the whole resting philosophy, and we debated whether it could rest and go back in the oven or if it would need to rest again — ultimately, he convinced me to put it back in the oven, but the timer I set for it went off after our guests had arrived, and I didn't hear it/completely forgot about it until we smelled it burning. My top layer of beautiful fresh mozzarella now looked like roasted marshmallows...but the parm still turned out really well. After everything, I'm not sure if it was worth all that time and all of those steps, but it was definitely tasty (and I’m looking forward to having the leftovers for dinner tonight).
Using my impulse flower purchases to weigh down the eggplant.
While everyone chatted and ate antipasti, I snuck back into the kitchen to boil the pasta and toss it with the cacio paste. I had no idea how this would work, but it was incredible to watch it come together. The hot pasta and some pasta water melt the paste into a perfect cacio e pepe sauce, and it takes no time at all. With the pasta coated, I hurried everyone to the table before the sauce had time to congeal. Granted, I hadn't been eating pasta for over a week, but I think it was the best cacio e pepe I've ever had?
Please compare this mozzarella with the mozzarella pictured at the top…
We stuffed ourselves, talking about everything from ICE and citizenship to starting our own weed company and ayurvedic eating (which this was most certainly not). We capped off the night with amaro and those Italian rainbow cookies, which were better than many I've had from actual Italian bakeries — nicely done FD. Nick refused to say if he liked this garlic bread better than the one I made in January, but he ate 5 pieces of this one last night and passed out on the couch as soon as everyone left, so I think this recipe has to be the winner.
Rundown:
Antipasti (grilled mushrooms, grilled artichokes, castelvetrano olives, grana padano cheese, marinated ciliegine, prosciutto and sopressata)
Iceberg Salad with Italian Dressing (I swapped provolone for canned black olives — two types of cheese just felt like a lot for salad)
Sautéed Broccoli Rabe With Garlic and Chili Flakes (this was fine, but not super noteworthy)
Italian rainbow cookies
