Eggplant Parmesan Recipe Photos with commentary

Anthony's Eggplant Parmesan Recipe Photos with Commentary
(Step by step photos of the cooking process for this recipe with commentary!)

Read the complete eggplant Parmesan recipe
.

I have placed some explanatory photos below that, hopefully, will help you with he Eggplant Parmesan recipe. I make this very similar to the method of how I make Lasagna.

Making the Eggplant Parmesan. Step by step photos Part 1
Preparing and pressing the Eggplant

Here we have to happy eggplants all ready to go!. Do be sure to take your time and pick out the nicest eggplants you can find. They need to be pretty firm. No soft spots.

You wash them and then peel them like you see above. A potato peeler works great for this. You can also see here that my lovely wife is helping me with this recipe photo shoot ;-)

Keep peeling like so.

Then you will want to slice them up into 1/4" slices.

Keep slicing. When you start placing the slices in the strainer, you will want to sprinkle a little bit of salt as you layout them into the strainer. Yo! You listening? These are deep dark secrets that I am letting loose here ;-)

Whalla! All sliced and ready to go. Place them in a strainer. They are no ready for pressing.

Find a plate the is slightly smaller than the opening of the strainer and place it on top of the slices.

Ta Da! Here you have the Anthony's Eggplant Wonder Press Machine! Took years of research to come up with this design! The teapot is full of water. You let this sit like you see above for about 6 hours or so.

6 Hours later you have this. You can see that the plate is a bit lower and there has been some liquid squeezed out of the eggplants. Very important!

Here we have 3 Eggs in a bowl and a little bit of milk. Add some nice freshly ground black pepper.

Then whip them up good. This will be light breading for the eggplant slices.

Here are your beautiful eggplant slices all pressed, squeezed out and ready to take a dip into the egg. Oooh, what will happen next......

Making the Eggplant Parmesan. Step by step photos Part 2
Egg coating and frying the Eggplants. (No bred crumbs, just the egg.)

At this point I usually try to clean up the kitchen just a bit, to get all ready for the browning of the eggplant slices. Here you see everything you need to get started.

Eggplant/Egg mix close up. Ooooh!

Ok, so what you do is, take the eggplant slices, dip them in the egg. Get them well covered and drop them into the hot olive oil. Too much egg is ok, just plop it in the pan, it's ok if you get a little egg overhang.

Look at the pan in this photo. See the little egg dropping there in the oil? I drop those in to see if the oil is the right temp. When drop a little egg in the hot oil, you should instantly get little bubbles around the edges.

So now you place, several slices in the pan and cook them for a while. The pan is at a temperature of about med-hi leaning toward high. You will have to adjust the temperature as you go.

See that nice golden brown color? That is what your shooting for.

Here are the slices flipped over after they have cooked on one side for about 2-4 minutes or so.

After they have been cooked to a golden perfection then you want to drain them well. What I use for this is a brown paper bag with paper towers on top of that.

Here are the happy eggplant slices sitting there draining. Oh the excitement of it all!

Once you have the paper towel filled up with eggplant slices, you will want to get more paper towels and press the top to remove excess oil/grease from top of the slices.

It is highly recommended that you have a wife (preferably an Italian wife) in the kitchen helping you along with the cooking. See the pretty smile? Actually, what she's thinking is, "if you don't get that camera out of my face I'll"..... Needless to say, you must be careful when taking pictures of wife. Make a note of it. ;-)

So, fill the pan up with as many slices as you can. You need room so the slices don't overlap. Here the slices have already been cooked on one side and have been flipped over. These are just about ready to put onto the paper towels for draining.

Making the Eggplant Parmesan. Step by step photos Part 3
Preparing the fried Eggplant for baking like Lasagna.

Here we have a whole bunch of eggplant slices that have been draining for a while. These are ready to be assimilated into the eggplant collective we call eggplant Parmesan.

This is an important photo. You see here on the left all the eggplant action. I have the slices, the egg, the eggplant slices cooking in the nice hot olive oil and note that I am stirring the sauce! This is important. The sauce should be cooking while you are working on the eggplant. DO NOT forget about the sauce!

The eggplant has been all sliced, egged and fried up and drained and is now ready to go. You start off by putting one thin layer of sauce at the bottom of the pan.

Then, you start placing the eggplant slices into the pan on top of the sauce. Note that you see here a plate of shredded Mozzarella cheese, this will be used soon! No eating all the cheese before it gets into the pan!

Then you pour more sauce on top of the eggplant slices, fill in all the cracks.

Then add some Mozzarella cheese and a little black pepper.

Then add some Parmesan cheese and fresh parsley.

Then add some more eggplant slices.

Then more Mozzarella, more Parmesan cheese and more parsley.

Yo! Did you forget about the sauce?
Check it now, capisce?

Add more stuff :-)

Add more sauce...

Here it is all ready to go in the oven. At this point you need to put tinfoil over the pan and crimp down the edges nice and tight. In it goes for cooking :-)

And here is a close up! :-) Would you believe at this point I forgot to finish taking the pictures? Guess I was yacking to much with the guests. Next time I cook this I will try to get a photo of this going into the oven and then a nice final product photo. Next time...