On Now
Weekdays 00:00 - 05:00
Early Mornings Oscar
NEXT: 05:00 - 06:00 The Agri Hour with Gerben
Listen Live Streams

News Talk

COLUMN: Ilse Cooks the Books (Melanzane alla parmigiana)

───   15:26 Thu, 22 Feb 2018

COLUMN: Ilse Cooks the Books (Melanzane alla parmigiana) | News Article

We are past the half-way mark in the month of love and February is almost done and dusted. This week, I’m cooking something for my best friend – my sister.


I have only one sibling, my older sister Liezl (although many people think I am the older sister – something I find both annoying and flattering at the same time).

Some of my best memories of my sister are of us travelling. We both love exploring, and we’ve been to many places together. We always have the best time – whether far away in Germany, Italy or Austria, or even on home soil. We’ll share a million laughs and even though we might get annoyed with each other, it’s usually something we can move past quickly and painlessly. 

Certainly, the one holiday neither of us will forget was a trip to Italy.  We began our trip in a teeny tiny village called Tremosine on Lake Garda with one trattoria, one pizzeria and one little café.  We took long walks through the narrow cobble-stone streets and sunbathed on the roof of our little hotel. 

Next, we were on our way to Florence on this self-drive holiday… but the insane traffic, gazillion hooting Vespas and my poor map-reading skills had us shouting at each other and both in tears.  Remember, this was the time before handy Google Maps! We literally paid a taxi driver to escort us out of Florence and we ended up staying at a nondescript hotel just outside the city. 

That evening, teary and deflated, we had dinner at a tiny restaurant – very clean, but very mundane and probably only frequented by truck drivers and residents in the area. I mean, this was as far away from the tourist track as you could get! Neither of us could speak a word of Italian, and my sister and I sat at the table, hating Italy and hating each other’s guts. But the waitress clucked around us like a mother hen, the pasta was absolutely incredible and by the end of the evening, we were screaming with laughter at the whole episode. 

The next day we set off for Milan, where we wisely stayed in a village outside the city in a century-old farmhouse. The family who lived there rented out the rooms to visitors and it was a whole different experience living in someone’s home.

I could go on and on – there are a million stories! -  but suffice it to say the dish I wanted to cook for my sister had to be Italian.  She has become a vegetarian in recent years, so I decided to make her one of my favourite Italian dishes – Melanzane alla parmigiana.


TESSA KIROS TWELVE – BAKED AUBERGINE WITH TOMATO, MOZZARELLA AND PARMESAN CHEESE

I’ve written about Tessa Kiros before in this blog.  Tessa was born in London to a Finnish mother and a Greek Cypriot father and the family moved to South Africa when she was four.  She left South Africa when she was eighteen and her cookery books reflect the food from her upbringing and her travels.

She married an Italian man and now lives in Tuscany.  Twelve is her first cookbook and is a wonderful, colourful celebration of the food of the region. There was never any other cookbook I was going to cook this dish from! 

Serves 6 (but to be honest, my husband and I had this for dinner and we polished off the lot)

3 medium aubergines, cut into 3 mm slices

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped

5 ripe tomatoes, skinned and chopped, OR a 400 g tin of peeled and chopped tomatoes

About 10 basil leaves, roughly torn

Flour for dusting the aubergines

Olive oil for frying

300 g mozzarella cheese, cut into slices (or two tubs of fresh mozzarella balls, if you can get them)

50 g/half a cup of freshly grated parmesan cheese

Cut the aubergine slices and put them in a colander. Sprinkle with salt and leave for about 30 minutes to allow the bitter juices to drain away. Rinse well after 30 minutes (I usually skip this step if the aubergine is nice and fresh without a lot of seeds).

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celcius. 

To make the tomato sauce, heat the olive oil in a saucepan. Add the garlic and as soon as you begin to smell it, add the tomatoes and half the basil. Season with salt and pepper and simmer for 15-20 minutes, or until the tomatoes have melted into a sauce.

Pat the rinsed eggplant slices dry with paper towels. Lightly dust both sides with flour. Heat enough olive oil to come 1 cm up the side of the saucepan. Heat the oil and fry the eggplant in batches until golden brown on both sides adding a little more oil if necessary. Transfer them to a plate lined with paper towels to absorb the oil. (I find this process incredibly tedious.  What I do, is heat up the oven grill, placing the aubergine slices unfloured on a baking sheet. I brush them with olive oil, sprinkle them with salt and grill them on both sides.)

Spoon a little of the tomato sauce into an oven dish of roughly 30 cm. Cover with a layer of aubergine slices. Add a few spoonfuls of tomato sauce, then a layer of the mozzarella cheese. Add the remaining basil leaves. Sprinkle with parmesan cheese. Repeat to use up the ingredients. Put into a hot oven and bake for 20-30 minutes or until the top is lightly golden and crusty. Cool slightly before serving.

Follow me on Twitter (ilse123) or on Facebook (https://web.facebook.com/IlseCooksTheBooks/) to chat about food and more!

***

@ 2024 OFM - All rights reserved Disclaimer | Privacy Policy | We Use Cookies - OFM is a division of Central Media Group (PTY) LTD.