Eggplant Parmigiana, Pugliese Style - Rossella's Cooking with Nonna

[Music] [Music] [Music] ciao everyone I'm Ursula Rocco and welcome back to cooking with Nonna I've got my very own no no Romana here today to make one of my personal favorite recipes ever no I'm gonna say hello everybody first all right everybody and what are we gonna cook today make a plan for me Jonna that's right we are making eggplant parmigiana today Puni SS style very important no I did film this video quite a few years ago back when Nona and I were both much younger but I wanted to do an updated version because I think we got way better at making videos over the years and I want to give you guys the best possible video that we can so excellent probably John up for years his style is featured in the cooking with Nona cookbook we've made it so many times for so many occasions and everyone loves it and everyone loves it because of our special secret ingredient no no what do we put in eggplant parmigiana that's so good they're so good that I put mortadella that mozzarella and eggplant I think a play yeah and we've a battered eggplant with a super moon is a batter now there is no one single way to make eggplant parmigiana I've actually seen I think they're over like a hundred different recipes really I think every single family makes excellent proud of me Jonna differently and this is just the way my family makes excellent parmigiana and we are from Puglia so the flavors of 'julia are present in this dish so if you don't love the way we make our eggplant parmigiana you keep making it the way you want it's okay I'm not gonna show up at your house and stop you but this is delicious too and it's got a few different components the first one of course is eggplant and we're gonna get to the eggplant part later but the first thing we're gonna do is make a sauce then we're gonna come back and we're gonna make our batter cut up our eggplant fry our eggplant while batter and why are at plant and then we're gonna assemble so none um the sauce for parmigiana what do you need then need the first thing you gotta put all you f Tanja and after I gotta put tomato sauce Basilica yeah and that's it super simple sauce yeah very very easy mmm-hmm no no it's a so first we're gonna get some extra virgin olive oil in our pan get this nice and hot so we're gonna get our oil nice and hot and we're gonna saute some onion and I'm gonna let Nona come over here no no you need to cry cuz if I do it she's gonna say I'm gonna do it wrong so they come Gold of the oh yeah you got a tomato sauce so you just want to cook this a little bit until it's a little golden right on the edges a little softer think it's about four five minutes so if you're looking for the full recipe with a complete list of ingredients and instructions just head over to the cooking with on a website or its in your cooking what's on the cookbook and I know all of you have it already so okay now we can put the crushed Tomatoes we're gonna put a little bit of salt not too much and now we're just gonna take our fresh basil yeah and tear it into pieces make this right with basil from your garden in Brooklyn yeah you got a lot of basil yeah about a lot of okay so I just lowered the flame to low and we're gonna let this hang out for the next 15 to 20 minutes uncovered now this is very important please don't deviate from this if you're making this recipe because this produces the perfect consistency tomato sauce and the consistency of the tomato sauce is very important in this recipe you don't want to end up with a sauce that's true watery because then you're gonna have a watery mess and you're not gonna be able to cut those beautiful pieces of parmigiana you don't want to have a sausage too thick because then when it cooks again in the oven it's gonna be too dry the sauce is gonna thicken up too much so it's really important that you follow the directions after 15 to 20 minutes just set this aside and when we come back what I'm gonna show you how to choose the proper eggplant how to make the batter how to batter it and then we're gonna fry some beautiful golden eggplant right now none yeah we got to do it okay we'll see you when the sauce is all done and we're gonna move on to the next step okay so now we are moving on to the next step which is eggplant selection and this is a very important part of making eggplant parmigiana you want to make sure that you are going to choose the right eggplant for the job so we have three eggplant here and no not is going to test them all out and let me know which one we are going to throw away we are going to keep two of them for the Oakland parmigiana okay check this I gotta elimination this no yes we they have too much like too heavy too early so if you pick a couple different I plant up you're going to feel different weights and the heaviest eggplant probably has more seeds in it and it's gonna be harder to cut those into nice thin slices because the seeds kind of make holes in the eggplant slices so we don't want that and you also want an eggplant that has a nice dark shiny skin right yeah below lucida yeah when they you see nice dark they me not - no no never too much sit inside you know okay so this we throw away yeah and we do something else do something you do minestrone yeah put that over to the side we don't need that one and we're gonna put our eggplant over here because now we're gonna make pasta yeah okay okay Plus that la is a batter and known as past ella is particularly very good and flavorful because we're gonna fill it with so many yummy things no no what do you put in your pasta I porn eggs cheese cheese garlic's main very say water and water very simple but very delicious we're gonna take this bowl over here yeah I'm gonna first get our flour going yeah okay don't know what else you bought okay I'm gonna get the whisk for her garlic mint the mint is really what gives this a lot of flavor guys don't skip the mint do yourself in cities and this is all part of me John Reggiano cheese we got to put salt yeah a little bit mm-hmm okay we're gonna whisk all these ingredients together first then we're gonna add the water yeah and with this pasta you can coat the eggplant for excellent Padma Jonah but you can also make a lot of other things we use the same pasta Allah to make the fried zucchini flowers to really coat any vegetable to make that you can make battered artichokes better cauliflower is particularly good it really is an amazing universal batter what's the boy I think every you can try all the vegetal you want anything tastes good with this batter on it and in fried just anything absolutely paper bag would taste delicious fried in this matter so you want to just whisk this until it's nice and smooth and then we're gonna set it aside okay and while I make your mother pasta oh yeah take our eggplant we got a handy-dandy none that knife no no you use this knife for everything yeah just got the good it's nice and we're gonna peel the eggplant first mmm-hmm just peel it off nice and thin don't try don't get too much of the meat off okay so now that we've peeled our eggplant we're gonna start slicing them lengthways and for the size probably Gianna that we're making we need about 20 slices I have an 11 by 8 and 1/4 inch baking dish and you definitely need about 20 slices for that you kind of need 18 but I make you do 20 and just you know for insurance I mean if they leftover eat them they're delicious so we're gonna do 10 slices per eggplant no no we can do maybe you can't have a mom because you have a more beat we'll see I got a try okay let's try okay I do it like this and this counts too because this slices like this this you use it to patch any holes so just because it's not like a perfect slice doesn't mean you're you can't use it you want to make the slices about a quarter of an inch thick you don't want them too too thin because then when you fry them they kind of fall apart so you want them to have a little bit of structure so okay so now we got all our eggplant done yeah and we can start battering and frying it my favorite part you're gonna smell great after he fries oh yeah the whole house smells amazing when you fry stuff in this fella I am Telling You you neighbors that you didn't even know you had are gonna start coming over so let me get this oil hot okay my god now we are frying an olive oil today that's just what no no no ma no links to fry if you want to fry in something else be my guest totally fine whatever makes you comfortable too we got beans ACTA I have to get some tongs and let's get going mm-hmm perfect now it's totally normal to get some little pieces that break off as soon as it goes into the oil and you're gonna let it cook about a minute on each side once it - until it's golden brown really I mean I can tell you good time but if your oil is fresh it's not gonna color or cook as fast as it would you know if it's like oil that you've used before or something so the first couple ones are going to come out a little bit light and the last ones you do always come out a little darker they color faster that's just how it goes but you want a beautiful golden brown color maybe they have a place for this one I think we'll go with three at a time okay that's enough no you talk are oppressed I'm a little impatient I'm a little bit of an impatient fryer Nonna's got the patience of the same yeah I mean bad out in the pasture that I'm gonna learn patience that's good it's gonna come great okay so now the hard part's over and we are on to assembling our eggplant parmigiana and we have our secret ingredient not Tudela now if you don't know how much $1.00 what does a lot I like to say is like baloney sexy Italian cousin it's sometimes it has little pistachios in it or peppercorns I love it like that and sometimes it doesn't have either of those things in it and you get it sliced nice and thin for something like this because it's supposed to be like a nice hint of North Adela in the dish and then we've got some Parmesan Reggiano cheese and some fresh mozzarella cubed now this has been sitting out for a while so some of the water is gone from the mozzarella that's great you don't need super fresh nuts that I love for this but I do prefer that you use fresh mozzarella instead of you know that stuff that comes in the vacuum pack you know you know the mozzarella that you shouldn't be using okay and you know the mussel you should be using so fresh months that I let the day after is perfect for a big dish like this there's not too much water in it but it's still fresh and still a better much that I love products and then how about this mountain of fried eggplant that I have over here how gorgeous is this oh my god look good looks good right mm-hmm okay so oh and we got our sauce or sauce that we made earlier and this might not look like too much sauce but it's not a lot of sauce on purpose because the number one enemy of an eggplant parmigiana or lasagna is over saucing you do not want to over sauce this baby you want to be able to cut it and see beautiful visible layers now if you must have more sauce because some people will be like it's a little dry for my taste then make extra sauce and when you cut pieces heat the sauce up and serve it on the side don't put it in the dish because then you're gonna have a big watery disaster alright we ready yeah I'm Melana you ready okay we're gonna start assembling our part Johnna and the first thing is we're gonna have a nice light coating of sauce at the bottom of the baking dish look at that nice sauce now you don't want too much at the bottom just a nice little piece mm-hmm it's good yeah do a beautiful layer of eggplant and this one you could probably fit about four pieces per per side per layer 3 and then this one I'm gonna put over here like this you want to make sure you're patching any holes so you want to create a nice strong layer of eggplant okay now we got to do sauce on top right yeah not too much sauce right no no like so much why you not like too much yeah and there were wine the best thing a plane and you cook too much sauce now I plant part of me Jonna when you were in Italy you would make on the holidays right yeah a fast let's see fresh develop out of me John oh yeah but Kayla Carla Malta Wow pretty messy she preferred even up you Costa cause that they prefer a more dissipate you know no meat yeah because the floor the cost a lot of money you know when she was there it was a little bit expensive Martha that'll cost us rapido I know no Martha dollar was considered yeah you know not exactly the most the most fancy or extravagant lunch meat back then so just some parmesan a nice sprinkling and then about a quarter of this mozzarella you want it to to cut it in little cubes like this so it distributes nice and evenly because the worst thing is when you take a bite and you're like there's no all in this pipe you know it's very disappointing and now our first layer of Martha that lab I gotta say yeah I'm gonna do about four slices beautiful so now we're gonna do the same thing all over again so I'm gonna start with a nice layer of eggplants the first time I went one way now I'm gonna go the other way and this way I'm gonna go for top this a little bit of sauce cheese you could put the mozzarella or the parmigiano first whichever way you want and another quarter I'm upset I'm up and now more much better yeah and now we're gonna do the same thing again can't believe it beautiful now more sauce I'm up for my job another little bit okay and now this one said our look goes on top you don't want to top there you don't want too much mozzarella on the top you know you want to be conservative with the mozzarella otherwise it's too you're gonna cut it there's strings everywhere it's a mess you know it's gonna be delicious with this amount of what's that it's perfect okay last time mortadella ah that's very nice and now we're gonna close it up so we're gonna make our final layer of eggplant oh no I need I got four in here but I got a patch tuck that in patch over here patch over here the top layer you really want to make sure you've got a nice solid solid wall of eggplant there over there beautiful it's so good you know one put all this okay you keep making sangwich yeah yeah out of this work you know if you have a nice small little container you could make a nice little personal one for somebody you like for somebody you love you want to put a dish in the corner where this whole one not you think so okay I'm gonna switch this one over here hey see ya good we did it yeah and now the rest of the sauce didn't look like a lot of sauce but it was gonna put the rest of the sauce right here spread it nice and evenly yeah I mean with a banner right you put a cheese now okay now we're gonna add the rest of the grated cheese we're not gonna add the mozzarella yet because if you put them up that Island now it's kind of gonna burn by the time this is done so I know not always puts the mozzarella for the last 10 minutes but the cheese we could put all the all the grated cheese we want and again for the full recipe the complete list of ingredients head to cooking with Nona calm or page 140 of the cooking with no no cut it's got it all spelled out for you right there they look good and look so good mm-hmm oh we finished okay now this baby is gonna go into a 400-degree oven for 30 minutes then we're gonna put them upside Eila and we're gonna bake it for an additional 10 minutes so 40 minutes altogether and then when it comes out of the oven do not cut it right away you want to rest this for at least 15 to 20 minutes you want to give it a chance to really settle in and then when you cut pieces you're gonna see beautiful layers of eggplant you're gonna see them up to that low you're gonna see them upset I'll it's not gonna be a stringing man I promise it's gonna be gorgeous it's gonna be the most gorgeous eggplant parmigiana you have ever cut pieces of swear to God in my life okay and then this what are you gonna do with this fine which tomorrow and it's good that's good for me good for everybody okay we'll see you when this is baked and rested and ready to eat all right our party Jana is all baked it's well rested it is ready to be eaten none are you ready yeah sure you ready to eat this can't wait okay now this looks so beautiful as you can see we got the nice melted monssai tile on top but not burnt mozzarella you got some nice spots of Chris penis but it's not too you know too hard now we need a very very very sharp knife to cut this because you want to cut beautiful pieces okay it's a nice piece this piece I think it's nice just the one faster it's too big so just the one thing okay I'll eat it you taste it or say don't worry it's not gonna go to waste sure okay let's see oh my goodness look at that [Applause] whew wait no no preocupada thank you how gorgeous is this good look at that you could see all the layers up in here it says absolutely perfect very nice very nice we do good yeah okay look okay on my side Giada Italian Pasadena poco poco okay she's gonna shut down just a little bit oh my god so good I'm gonna it still is a little warm the longer this sits out the more it really rests and all the flavors together and it's gonna like stay more intact this the next day is dynamite it's the best actually if you're gonna bring it to somebody's house I prefer they can make it the night before because the flavors really have a chance to all come together beautifully no no we made our favorite recipe yeah everybody's gonna make it now I hope so yeah everybody they gotta make because they come so good very good and this was a secret recipe that she did well she started sharing it ten years ago but you know no no thank you for making this with me and thank you for being my Nonna I love you bye everybody good luck you you

Channel: Rossella's Cooking with Nonna

Views: 114,374

Rating: 4.7818642 out of 5

Keywords: Rossella, Rossella Rago, Cooking with Nonna, Eggolant Parmigiana, eggplant parmesan, how to make eggplant parmigiana, how to make eggplant parmesan

Id: Q7WtZETm7PM

Length: 27min 10sec (1630 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 02 2017