Alone and Unobserved

Perhaps you have seen the Rosetta Stone advertisement about the Midwestern farm boy in love with the Italian supermodel. If not, here it is:

Hardworking Farm Boy

And here is a link to Ian Frazier’s hilarious article in the April 13, 2009 New Yorker that imagines what kind of Italian lessons that hardworking farm boy will need if he wants to get his girl. (It’s even better if you actually speak/read Italian.)

As a follow-up to the French novel I just finished—and in reaction to the Italian Mormon mission reunion I went to month ago where I couldn’t speak a word of Italian—I’m now reading an Italian mystery novel, La forma dell’acqua (“The Shape of Water”) by Andrea Camilleri. The story is set in a small town in Sicily and is written in a bizarre mixture of Italian and Sicilian, and so far it’s pretty good. It’s kinda gross and sexy and dark, and my main reaction to it is amazement that I understand gross, sexy, dark Italian/Sicilian. You wouldn’t think my pure-as-snow Mormon missionary vocabulary could handle it, but you would be wrong. (I blame all the books on Mafia slayings I read on the sly.)

Like a great number of other healthy, delicious vegetables [SEE: arugula; broccoli rabe; endive], I didn’t taste eggplant until I lived in Italy. This is not to say that Italians only eat greens (hello, pasta!) or that they are more health-conscious than my mother (because that is simply not possible); just that fresh vegetables and fruits are ubiquitous and cheap, not to mention fresh and delicious, if bought at the local markets in Italy.

The first eggplant I encountered was breaded and fried “cutlet-style,” a common Sicilian side dish, and it was love at first bite. The crunchy, flavorful breading surrounds a juicy, soft eggplant interior that melts in the mouth. Here’s a recipe for them from my recipe box: Cotolette di Melanzane

Eggplant is so versatile. It can be baked, fried, grilled, boiled, braised, breaded, and even though it tastes completely different each way, it’s still just as delicious. You can put it in pasta sauce, layer it on pizza or turn it into a dip for pita—you can even stuff it, as the marvelous sognatrice demonstrates on her blog.

If you just consider the standard Eggplant Parmigiana, there are as many ways of making it as there are cooks, which means that the ideal Parmigiana I crave is a bizarre mixture of all of the versions I’ve tried: the sauce would have to somehow be plain marinara while also containing prosciutto cotto (both cubed and sliced), boiled egg, capers, onions, garlic, ground beef, hot peppers and capers; the eggplant would have to be fried and baked, breaded and plain, and cut crosswise and lengthwise; the dish would have to be layered with mozzarella, scamorza, pecorino, ricotta, breadcrumbs, and béchamel; and it would have to be served both hot, warm and cold. Thus far, reality has prevented me from realizing this ideal recipe, but I am determined to persevere.

In the meantime, here is a recipe that uses breaded eggplant cutlets and has a spicy tomato sauce with capers: Melanzane alla Parmigiana. Be sure not to eat it all at once; it only gets better after being chilled overnight.

Enjoy!