Eggplant Ala Short Man Syndrome, Or Eggplants for Pedro

Tina, come get some eggplant, you fat lard!

One of the most fun things about joining a CSA has been learning to eat seasonally. And one of the most fun things about eating seasonally is the sense of adventure it brings. It means I'm constantly cooking with new ingredients. And that's just fun.

As it turns out late summer / early fall is eggplant season. It also turns out that if you subscribe to my CSA you get, on average, 3,976,000 pounds of pasta in a given month. That means we eat a lot of pasta and a lot of Italian-y themed things around my house. So naturally when I picked up this week's goodies and discovered two big, beautiful, shiny eggplants and another 46,791 pounds of pasta, I opted for an Italian-y eggplant dish. Having already pledged my heart to zucchini parmesan some time ago, I didn't want to go with ye-olde standard eggplant parm. Instead I opted to create Eggplant ala Short Man Syndrome, or Eggplants for Pedro... or as some unfunny people call it - Eggplant Napoleon. It was incredibly simple and ooey gooey cheesy fab.  Here's how it works

Eggplant ala Short Man Syndrome, Or Eggplants for Pedro, Or Just Plain Eggplant Napoleon if You're a Dullard

INGREDIENTS

1 Eggplant
1 Ball Fresh Mozzerella Cheese
1/4 cup(ish) Panko bread crumbs (seasoned Italian Style)
1 handful fresh basil, chopped up
1 cup(ish) marinara type sauce of your choosing (I went with a roasted red pepper garlic sauce)
1/4 cup(ish) Parmesan cheese

HOW IT WORKS

First, heat up your oven to 450. While that's going on, cut your eggplant into 1(ish)" thick slices. Be sure and cut some of the fat part of the eggplant as well as the skinnier top part.

"We're sliced. Tomorrow we march on Dresden!"

Then grease up a cookie sheet. Get it nice and greasy because if there's one thing worse than an eggplant with short man syndrome, it's an eggplant with short man syndrome that's stuck to a cookie sheet. It's just not pretty. Put your beautiful eggplant slices on the lubed up pan and pop 'em in the oven for about 15 minutes, til they start to get kinda squishy and brown.

Meanwhile at the Hall of Justice slice up your mozzarella into about 1/8" slices. Pro tip: if you pop a soft cheese like mozzarella in the freezer for a few minutes before you start cutting it, it'll be infinitely easier.

"Oh my God! It's just so so cold! I... I.. can't... I can't go on!"

While we're at it, here's another pro tip: if you clean your oven once in a while, there won't be grime on it that will catch fire when you try to roast eggplants and you won't have to do a ceremonial dance for the smoke detector.

"Allow me to sing you the song of my people. Now dance, monkeys, DANCE!"

But, I digress.  Now that you've put out small kitchen fires and sufficiently sliced the mozzarella cheese, it's probably time to take those eggplants out of the oven. When you do get out a brownie pan and grease it up. Yeah, we're dirtying another pan. We need to make the dish boy earn his keep. What's that? There is no dish boy? But, but... he seemed so real... and so sudsy sexy. 

Ahem, anyway, in the bottom of your greasy brownie pan, place your three largest eggplant slices. Dollop a gob of marinara type sauce on them. Dollop some basil on top of that. Then lay down a slice of mozzarella. Now make it rain parmesan cheese. Tada. You've made one whole layer. Keep repeating the process til you run out of one of your ingredients.

It's like Jenga... with groceries.

Once you've run out of one or more of your ingredients, it's time to top them off. Sprinkle the bread crumbs all over the top of those suckers. Then stick 'em back in the oven for about 20 minutes til they get ooey gooey melty cheesy and the bread crumbs get brown.

I made you a delicious eggplant. Gosh!

And that's all there is to it. You should have an ooey-gooey stack of deliciousness that isn't exactly going to be winning any awards for food porn star of the year but tastes so awesome you don't care it isn't pretty.

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