Ok, first entry, no surprise, as it’s probably the most commonly though of eggplant dish in the US:
Recipe - Eggplant Pecorino
Lots to say about this one.
First, it’s the first time I’ve either cooked or eaten eggplant. Never really saw the need before, as I always saw it portrayed as a substitute for pasta or meat, and since I’m not gluten-intolerant or a vegetarian, I felt like it never really applied to me.
Second, I transcribed this from an ATK/CC video, so I had to guess at a couple of spots, but I refuse to register an online account with them again, just to get a season’s/series’ worth of recipes. IMO, they’re borderline predatory on their website.
Third, I think my eggplants were larger than theirs - I didn’t bother weighing them at the store because they were all roughly the same size anyway. That meant I didn’t get the four smaller stacks the video so beautifully displays, but it worked out.
Some in-process pics:
Another thing…in the video, Brian says “…a half-cup of grated pecorino” between the layers - I just grated a bunch and loosely measured by volume - not cheesy enough, especially since throughout the video, both Brian and Julia yap on and on about how this is crazy with the cheese. I put it weight measures for the cheese, and I think it could still use more.
I used a red onion because that’s what I had on hand.
On to the final product:
It did come out soupier than I expected, as theirs didn’t, but such is life. It didn’t really change the taste much, and it wasn’t swimming in it, just a little loose.
Taste was fine, mostly dictated by the sauce, which is excellent and robust. If you’re a sauce fiend, you’d likely enjoy this.
Texture…not much different than a simple cheese lasagna made with pasta noodles…and there’s the rub - why would I make this, which is frankly a helluva lot more work and mess, instead of a simple cheese lasagna?
I suppose there are health benefits, but then the cheese still gets in the way of that, I think.
Overall, then, it’s in that odd category of “Tastes Good but Won’t Make Again.”
One last thing that made me laugh: being in the US, I find we’re frequently schooled on the way we adopt recipes from other cultures and give them “incorrect” names. They mention in this video that the recipes comes from an Italian-American restaurant in Westlake, Ohio (just up the road from you,
JAS_OH1), and that it’s listed on the menu as eggplant parmesan, despite the fact that there’s absolutely no parmesan in it - it’s replaced with the pecorino.
When he ask the Italian-American owner of the restaurant about that, she said that when she would travel back home to Italy to visit her family, that’s what her family did - they made it with pecorino, which was what they used in her area, but still called it eggplant parmesan, because that’s just what everyone knew it as. I like it!
), presented in a fairytale spun-honey birdcage kind of thing.
