Lasagna and Eggplant Parm Had a Child, and It Is Wonderful

There is a transient interval yearly when many of the summer season’s finest produce overlaps with a lot of what’s to come back within the fall and winter. Piles of purple tomatoes sit alongside mounds of recent, crisp apples, and onerous winter squash mingle with bell peppers and eggplant. I would not need to ever have to select my one favourite time of the yr—all of them have their place—but when I needed to, it might be onerous to not single out this quick but ample shoulder-season as some of the superb.

That is additionally a time of yr when temperatures drop and cravings for extra comforting, filling food hit. On this second, I can not consider a greater dish to make than lasagna alla Norma, which is an al forno (“baked”) spin on the well-known Sicilian pasta that includes summertime stars like eggplant and tomatoes together with recent dairy reminiscent of ricotta or mozzarella (some recipes for this lasagna use one, some the opposite—I take advantage of each). It is the proper approach to benefit from the final of summer season’s produce in a means that feels suited to the autumn.

Whereas this recipe is usually often known as lasagna alla Norma (or lasagna alla Catanese, after the town of Catania the place alla Norma is alleged to originate), I discover it simply as helpful to think about it as a mashup between eggplant Parmigiana and lasagna, given its alternating layers of fried eggplant, tomato sauce, cheese, and pasta. On a technical degree, this Parmigiana mindset is extra helpful in figuring out the easiest way to make the dish.

Once I was working years in the past on my recipe for Italian-style eggplant parm (melanzane alla Parmigiana), I made it the way in which I would discovered to make it much more years in the past whereas engaged on farms in Italy: I sliced recent summer season eggplant, fried it in oil, then layered it with recent mozzarella, and a easy recent tomato sauce. It is my most well-liked approach to make it, way more than the breaded Italian-American model—the result’s silky and aromatic, not heavy with breading.

However over time, some feedback popped up on the recipe complaining a few watery outcome. This stumped me—it’d by no means occurred to me earlier than, not on the farm, and never again at dwelling in New York. Finally I noticed sufficient feedback of this kind that I revisited my recipe and in addition had it cross-tested by considered one of my check kitchen colleagues (she reported nice outcomes). Ultimately, I up to date the recipe barely with some small technical changes to assist cut back potential wetness, all of which I am making use of to this recipe as nicely. They’re:

• Salt the eggplant. My lifelong expertise is that almost all in-season eggplant doesn’t should be salted. It isn’t bitter, which is usually given as the rationale to salt, and I haven’t got any points with the way it cooks when unsalted. However even a short salting does pull out a number of the eggplant’s water, and if wetness was a difficulty for some cooks at dwelling, it appeared like a logical step so as to add to my parmigiana recipe, and to this one. Consider it as an insurance coverage coverage towards undesirable wetness.
• Drain nicely after frying. This was a step in my unique recipe for the parm, however I rewrote the directions to emphasise how necessary it’s to blot the fried eggplant slices nicely to take away extra oil. Oil is not water, in fact, however an abundance of it might in concept give the impression of a too-wet dish.
• Keep away from skinny tomato sauce. This too was much less a technical change to my recipe and extra a rephrasing of what was already there, stressing extra clearly the significance of utilizing a sauce that isn’t too skinny and watery. It does not should be thick like tomato paste by any means, however you desire a sauce that, whereas recent and vibrant and fruity, can be thick with the fruit’s pure fiber, very similar to a great apple sauce.
• Blot the mozz. I strongly want actual, recent mozzarella to the low-moisture stuff, despite the fact that it isn’t pretty much as good of a melter and might launch water when it does soften. It has a clear, milky taste that comes by within the remaining dish and considerably improves it, making it miles higher than any of the low-moisture mozzarella cheeses that often get advisable in these sorts of recipes. So, what to do about that wateriness? Easy: I simply seize a clear kitchen towel and blot the cheese nicely to absorb extra water. That appears to do the trick.

With the entire above changes, I am assured my melanzane alla Parmigiana recipe is not going to come out watery for anybody, and I can say the identical for this lasagna, which makes use of all the identical methods, simply with some pasta layered in for good measure.

The result’s incredible, with flavors and textures that strike as each summery and autumnal on the similar time. Although, for all my speak in regards to the seasons, I will be trustworthy: I would fortunately eat this any time of yr.