Eggplant Parmesan Recipe | The Vivaldi Way!

Today Steve is making Eggplant Parmesan the homestyle way!

Steve kicks things off by admitting he was shocked to learn how many people out there don’t like eggplant. Since it’s in season, he decided this was the perfect time to show why Eggplant Parmesan deserves some love.

Throughout the video, Steve explains how he debated on the best way to present this recipe, and ultimately decided to keep it simple and homestyle. Along the way, not everything goes perfectly… and Steve reminds us that cooking doesn’t always have to. Sometimes the little hiccups are what make the meal more authentic.

We start with baked eggplant slices, move on to layering everything in the pan with sauce and cheese, then finish it off in the oven. Once it comes out golden and bubbling, Steve digs in and gives it the final taste test.

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Amazing how many people seem to like despise eggplant. So, I thought, why not? Eggplants are in season in Quebec this time of year. So, we’re going to do an eggplant parm today. And it’s not an easy. This is This video I’ve struggled with. It’s been 3 4 days I’ve been awake trying to decide how I’m going to show it to you. It’s been done fried. It’s been done baked. It’s peeled or unpeeled. Breaded, unbreeded. My restaurant version is normally peeled and baked, then layered like a lasagna. But I don’t think I’m going to do that today. And I was also deciding, I have a slicer. Do I use the slicer or do I cut by hand? Uh the home cook, would they prefer to fry or would they prefer to bake? What’s easier for you? I think we’re going to leave the eggplants unpeeled. We’re going to slice by hand and we’re going to bake in the oven cuz I think that’s what I would do at home. Eggplant parm. Here we go. You can cut it on the round or you can cut it on the long. Today I’m going to cut it on the long. I’m going to take top and bottom off to give yourself a stable base. And then we’re just going to cut straight down. I’m actually, what I might actually do is I might just shave a piece off the side. I’ll fix this piece after just so I have a flat edge when it’s cooking. Okay. So, I should have done that on the first one, but thought about it now. So, if you want, there we go. Third times. I try and shave a piece off each side there. If you want, you can use a peeler. And that’s just going to give you a flatter surface to uh bake it on later on. Now, we’re going to lay this out on a pan and we’re going to salt. Cut this piece in half. Cut this one a bit too thick. Look guys, when you’re cooking, your cuts aren’t always perfect, okay? Things don’t always go as planned. you know, you just adjust and you do your best. And you know what? At the end of the day, it’s going to come out pretty good, you know. So, I’m actually going to salt both sides. Normally, I salt one side when I’m just trying to draw the water, but I want to speed up the process a bit. And we’re just going to set this aside, let it rest for a little while, let the water start coming out, and then we’ll get them in the oven and bake. How long do you suggest it sits? Okay. If you if you have if you have the foresight, you can do this the night before and and let it sit overnight in the fridge and let it draw out the water. I’d say at least half an hour, though. So, eggplants’s been resting. I would like to have rested it a little bit longer, but we’ll force it along a little bit. Salt has pulled out a lot of the water. And what I’m going to do now is pat it dry. I’m going to oil it up and we’ll get it in the oven baking. Oil it up. So, [Music] oh, a fresh sheet with a parchment on top. This is olive oil. And what I’m going to do is I’m just just going to use this paper. I don’t like using bristle brushes anymore. And all these bristle brushes, they tend to fall apart. So, when I bake my eggplant to make sure I cover everything. We got the bottom nicely oiled. And now I’m actually going to take this paper and I’m going to brush. I’m going to be generous with the oil. And it’s going to go into a pretty hot oven. And I don’t want to give too much time for the eggplant to absorb the oil. Into an oven we go. It’s going to be a 400°ree oven. And at this thickness should take at least 20 25 minutes. All right, we’ll be back. Eggplants ready. [Music] All right, it’s been about uh 25 minutes. Yeah, at 400°. Okay, we’re going to let that cool off a bit and then we’re going to lay all those we’re going to lay our eggplants. So, get this on a rack to cool off. We’re back. So, off camera, I was just checking the eggplant a touch. And the thing is with eggplant, sometimes if you cut a bit too near to the top, you’re going to find, especially when you bake it as opposed to fry it. I cut off two pieces where I cut a bit too much to the top and I thought it was a bit too hard. So I’m just going to leave it to the side, discard it. I’m not going to use it. Okay. And we’re going to rest of the eggplant is nicely cooked, ready to go. So, it’s already been salted, remember before it went in. I’m going to put a nice base of this is our tomato sauce. There’s onions, garlic, and uh basil and salt in the tomato sauce. And we are going to start layering our eggplant parm. Okay, actually right here is a piece I find a bit hard as well. So, all right, that’s coming off. There’s no right or wrong way to do this, folks, cuz you’re going to Now, I don’t go too crazy on the sauce between the layers, okay? The sauce will spread between all the layers, okay? Some fresh mozzarella here. We’ll put a few pieces here and there. There we go. Some parmesan. Bit of oregano. Throw a few leaves of basil here and there. Spread it out. Onto the next layer. Crisscross. It doesn’t really matter. It already smells amazing. Rinse and repeat. So, sauce. Spread it out. Fresh mutz. Mutz is for you uh Long Island, New York, New Jersey boys. All right. Over here, it’s mozzarella. Paragano reaniano. Make it rain in here a bit. Oregano. Bit more basil. So, I think the oven is the way to go for the at the house. You might have to do it in two batches depending on how big your uh your eggplant is. But this is going to be our final layer. So, I’m going to go a little more sauce on this layer. Even that out. And the last layer. I just want to chop it up a bit so I can spread it a little more even. We’re going to put the rest of our mutz sorrella. Now, we’re going to go heavy with the parm. They don’t call it eggplant parm for nothing. She’s good to go. We’re going to get this in the oven. Should be about half an hour at uh 400° again. Oh yeah, this is going to need to set up for a bit. Homestyle eggplant parm. We’re going to have to let this cool off a bit before we cut it, but we’ll get right back to that. So, what did we do? Like seven videos today. We did eggplant, eggplant spreads, we did a bunch of stuff. complicated shoot today. I seem stressed. Yeah. You know what’s stressing me out the worst right now? Trying to cut this eggplant, realizing I put it in an aluminum plate and I want to bring it somewhere after that if I cut too deep, I’m going to cut through the plate. And it’s still somewhat fresh. So, you guys are going to actually struggle see me struggle more trying to cut a piece of eggplant cleanly out of this than out of anything I’ve done. Yeah. Come on. I’m trying not to touch the bottom. Let’s go and uh we’ll let the spatula do the work a bit. All right, up we go. We got it out. Oh, not bad. Not bad. There we go. Home version eggplant parm [Music] for me. I go get some chili flakes on this sucker and I’m good to go. That is freaking delicious. So, I was unsure when I started this video to peel or not to peel, to fry or to bake. Do it this way. Do it this way. This came out really, really good. I’m actually really jazzed about this recipe. Delicious. Hope you enjoy. Like and subscribe if you do. Lots of content coming. V.