Eggplant Parmesan

So guys, no one ever told me that eggplant Parmesan was so easy to make! I had it in college a lot but had never tried it myself. But when my grocery store had eggplants for $1, I knew this was the perfect time. And it turned out great! I modified the recipe from here.

Ingredients
1-2 eggplants (I used 2)
olive oil
salt
some kind of marinara (I used vodka sauce)
whatever kinds of cheese you have around (I used Parmesan, cheddar, and asiago.)
1-2 eggs (I used 1, but should probably have used 2)

Steps
1. Slice your eggplant into 3/4-inch-thick circles. Then put salt on both sides and let them sit in a colander for 20 minutes. Something about getting weird juices out to change the texture and flavor. Whatever. Just go do something else for 20 minutes while your eggplant is hanging out juicing itself.

2. Once 20 minutes is up, rinse each piece of eggplant thoroughly in cool water and then shake it off and then squish the eggplant between paper towel on both sides to get remaining juices out. This is a teeny bit time consuming (ie, more than 2 minutes total) and I can't actually verify that this helps with anything, but it was recommended in the recipe I used so again, whatever, just do it.

2.5. Pre-heat the oven to 350.

3. Now fry your eggplant patties in a skillet. If you use any oil, I recommend a little bit of olive oil. Flip 'em so they're brown on each side.

4. While you're frying, put some marinara sauce in the bottom of a baking pan. Whatever you have lying around. I used a loaf-sized pan.

5. Also while you're frying, beat your egg/s and then mix in the cheese.

6. Then, when your eggplants are done frying, put a row of them on the marinara sauce. Then spread some of the egg-cheese sauce stuff on the eggplant. Then stack more eggplant. Then more egg-cheese stuff. Until you're out of eggplant and egg-cheese.

7. Put the rest of your sauce over all of the stuff. Put that sucker in the oven for 30 minutes. The sauce should be bubbly then. If not let it bake a little more.


I like that the ingredient ratios here are pretty flexible. I mean, it's basically eggplant, sauce, and cheese, so you can adjust it. Or you can default to my recipe-fixer: Add cheese.

Total time: like an hour. Definitely something I will make again! I'll post pictures when I eat the leftovers or when I make it again.