Italian eggplant recipes
Italian eggplant recipes: baked eggplant as eggplant appetizer among other ideas for cooking this vegetable so used in Italian recipes.
These recipes for eggplant will surely make you discover new tasty and easy dishes using it. The eggplant, poor in vitamins but rich in fibers, is easy to cook and gives excellent results.
If you have time before cooking, an old tip that is still useful tells that you should “eliminate the sour taste”. How can you do it? Just cut each eggplant and put some salt on it (the normal quantity you use to cook). Put them into a strainer and leave them for about an hour. A dark water will be eliminate leaving them sweeter. (No problem if you don’t have the time. It’s not essential.)
The eggplant parmesan recipe is the most famous (probably also the best one). It's a dish that often is served as a first plate, instead of pasta. Click here to see how you can cook it by yourself.
Fried eggplants
These are the easier ones. You just have to cut them in long slices and pass them on the wheat flour (salted) and then fry, preferably with extra virgin olive oil .After taking them out of the frying pan, put them on absorbent paper, as you should do with all fried food recipes, and…enjoy!
Homemade eggplant fritters
These eggplant fritters are my mother-in-law genuine recipe. It's one of those antique dishes used when people did not have money to buy meat and had to be creative with what their courtyards produced. Baked eggplants
My husband loves this way of cooking eggplants.To have a good result it would be better to find the smaller ones, better if organic or local (the biggest ones aren’t the better! They grew too much and absorb oil while cooking, and sometimes leave water during cooking time).You just have to wash the eggplants, cutting off the hard “leave” and put them into the oven. When they are done (try with a fork and they are done when they are soft and deflated.
In the meantime prepare a mix with minced parsley, minced garlic, salt and a good extra virgin olive oil . Take it all to the table and each one will open the own eggplant and add the mix. Buy good bread to eat together.
Grilled eggplants
These are so easy too. In this case, it’s better to cut them (in halfs) before and leave a while with salt, to eliminate the water. Then add a thread of extra virgin olive oil to a pan and put the half pieces with the opened part against the pan.
Leave them into the oven at 200°C for about half an hour.
Then turn them to the other side and add the same mix as the recipe above (minced parsley, minced garlic, extra virgin olive oil and salt) spreading on the surface. Put them again into the oven and leave for another 15 minutes or more, if you prefer them roasted (as my daughter does).
Green eggplants
Prepare some minced garlic and parsley. Add extra virgin olive oil in a pan and add the minced garlic and parsley. Before they get coloured, add it cut in cubes and mix it all.Add salt and let it cook until they are soft. You can also add fresh tomatoes, peeled and cut in small pieces. It’s good to eat with bread or as a cocktail dip.
