Stardew Valley #37: Eggplant Parmesan

Ingredients: Eggplant, Tomato

Item Description: Tangy, cheesy, and wonderful.

Eggplant! Tomato! I think we need more than that actually. I've never made parmesan anything before so I looked it up. Seems like you need flour, egg and breadcrumbs to crumb it up, a tomato based sauce and some kind of cheese combination. Yknow, hence, parmesan.

Chopped the eggplant into nice burger-sized discs. PS its called an aubergine here in the uk. One recipe reccommended to salt it and then let it air dry for a while, but too late I want to make dinner soon so im gonna just pop it in the oven while it preheats for a bit.

Next we coat it in flour. Sorry i took this photo sideways so it looks all weird I don't know why I did that.

Then we dip it in egg and coat it in crumbs! I dont think ill get much to stick to the skin of the eggplant. I don't think that will matter though.

Now we need to fry these up crisp i guess!? Bit of olive oil drizzled on it to help. I've got some flavoured olive oil but do what you want.

Now we can prepare the cheese! I've chosen mozzarella and "parmesan" ok its grana padano, SORRY ITS LIKE £2 CHEAPER AND I LITERALLY DONT KNOW THE DIFFERENCE THEY TASTE THE SAME

Cooked enough!? I decided to transfer these to a casserole dish, which I could have used this whole time but I didn't think very hard. A casserole dish will be better for when we GET SLOPPY

Alright first we have mozzarella slices and then im gonna season it with garlic powder and oregano.

Then tomato sauce. I actually bought a second tomato based pasta sauce in case I was too low on passata, but I think I had plenty so ive just used that, a splash of balsamic vinegar, and PLENTY of grated PARMESAN-LIKE ITALIAN HARD CHEESE. Then we shove it back in the oven and bake it for 15-20mins until the cheese is... well you know..

Ohhhh yeah thats the look. Shes got the look.

*****

Hard to go wrong with a massive pile of cheese and tomato sauce! The mozzarella was soooooo insanely stringy like a cartoon pizza. The flavours were great. I kinda don't really see the point in breading the eggplant though...? Maybe i didn't dry the vegetables enough but the wetness of both the eggplant and the tomato sauce made the breadcrumb coating decidedly un-crispy so you'd barely notice it was there. I feel like we could have just skipped that part and literally just sauced up some vegetables.

It's like a chicago pizza pie crossed with a moussaka.