Italian Night

Elizabeth's parents send up a care-package full of fresh veg...okra, tomatoes, squash, zucchini blossoms and eggplant. We started off by stuffing the blossoms with goat cheese and pan-frying them in olive oil.

Tonight, we went down to Chef's Market and bought some fresh mozzarella and Cento canned tomatoes. Passing by the deli, I couldn't resist picking up some sopressata.

For starters, we had a fresh caprese salad of mozzarella, basil from the plants Elizabeth's parents sent us and fresh, juicy tomatoes...accompanied by some thin-sliced sopressata.

Her parents had both regular and blanc eggplant; we thin sliced the blanc, which was milder than regular eggplant, and fried it in some olive oil...the result was halfway between a potato chip and an eggplant sautee...very delicious.


We finished up the starters and then got down to the business of creating some eggplant parmesan. The Cento tomatoes were some what seasoned in the can already and needed only a dash of salt, oregano, fennel seed and red pepper. Elizabeth baked the oil & bread crumb-coated eggplant slices at 350 for 15 minutes, turning once, until al-dente, then she stacked and layered with her savory red sauce. She sprinkled little bits of fresh mozarella in with a shred of good quality parmesan...20 minutes later at 350 we were ready to dig in. it was so good I forgot to take a BEFORE picture...here's the AFTER with the dent I put into it.


C & E