Eggplant “Sandwiches”
Thursday, July 15th, 2010
I haven’t fixed these in years but the perfect opportunity presented itself. We were invited to a wedding of one of the dancer friends of my wife. Well, she’s my friend too but I’m not really a part of the dance community except by marriage. In any case part of the wedding was the request to bring a dish for the reception. I volunteered to bring an appetizer (antipasto). These things are just so delicious and relatively simple to make. They are from a cookbook I bought long ago by a San Francisco chef named Carlo Middione. He had a great place in San Francisco called Vivande Porta Via which sadly has closed. These come from a cookbook of his entitled “The Foods of Southern Italy†which is available (I checked Amazon) and is a worthy addition to any Italophile cookbook shelf.
In any case, these little sandwiches made of eggplant slices with mortadella and provolone inside are just the thing to serve someone that thinks that they don’t like eggplant. They are the best eggplant that you’ll ever eat! You bread the outside by dipping them in beaten egg and then coat with a mixture of breadcrumbs, parsley, parmigiano reggiano then drizzle with a little olive oil and bake them in the oven. You’d better make a double recipe since they will disappear fast. You can find the complete recipe here. One thing of course when doing the dunking in eggs and breading – I never can seem to do this without getting wads of breading all over my fingers because after all you’re breading your fingers at the same time. I wind up dumping some of the breading on the top and shaking off the excess and then turning them over and doing the same. Believe me, it’s worth the effort.
Where is that food stylist when I need her? These are right out of the oven and waiting to be cut into quarters as finger food to amaze your friends. Â You’ll need to soak the baking sheet. Maybe I should have given it a thin coat of oil. In any case it will clean right up after a bit.
So pour a glass of wine and give a toast to Carlo.
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