Chicken Salad Should NOT Come Out of a Can.

Canned tuna, canned salmon, canned shrimp, canned clams, canned crab and canned chicken; has convenience just gone too far?  Or you go into the deli area of your market and see a "salad" in a plastic container; but where are the edible ingredients?  Usually there is so much mayonnaise, you wonder if that is exactly what is in the container and nothing else.  Mayonnaise for any type of "salad" should be a coating, a simple binder for ingredients, NOT the main ingredient.

Chicken salad - do you like it with shredded chicken or chunky?  I prefer chunky myself; I like to bite into a piece of chicken and know how it tastes combined with all the added ingredients.  The best way to prepare chicken for salad making is either Rotisserie or Boiled; yes I said boiled. Boiling the chicken does not diminish its flavor; it simply is a quicker way of removing any excess fat while ensuring the chicken is thoroughly cooked. You want to use either boneless, skinless chicken breasts or chicken tenderloins; nice and meaty! For a serving of two, use four tenderloins or one large breast half (chickens have two breasts, so you only need one); place in a small saucepan and add enough water to cover the chicken. Using high heat, boil the chicken until a thick layer of scum forms on the top; skim it off; then place the chicken under running water to rinse off any residue still hanging on. Put the chicken on a plate, cover with plastic wrap and let it cool down in the refrigerator; this will also help draw out any excess water the chicken may have absorbed.  Why get rid of the water?  To keep your mayonnaise from getting runny; nothing so unappetizing as scooping up salad and seeing watery residue at the bottom of the bowl.  Yuck!

When making your salad, don't get over complicated with ingredients as you want to taste that chicken. You're looking at my photo and saying, "Where's the salt?"; most mayonnaise brands have salt already as an ingredient. After making your salad, taste it and then decide if you'd like extra salt; remember, you can always add, but not take away. Diced red onion is sweeter than the regular white onion, less harsh on the taste buds. Diced celery will give you some color and added crunch, as will the red onion; two tablespoons of each will be just right. Ground black pepper is a flavor enhancer, but use it sparingly (a half teaspoon for two servings) as it can make your salad on the "hot" side of spicy. When cutting the chicken, first cut strips with the grain, then cut your chunks; otherwise the chicken meat will shred apart, unless you want shredded chicken that is.

 
Place the chicken, onion, celery and black pepper into a medium mixing bowl; add four tablespoons of mayonnaise and gently fold together. This is when you can now decide if you would like more mayonnaise or is it just right as it is. If you want more, only add one tablespoon at a time; you want to coat and bind, not overwhelm.

When it comes to making a sandwich with your freshly made chicken salad, well that's really up to personal preferences. Depending on my mood, and what I have in stock, it could be a sesame seed kaiser roll (as in the photo), a sub roll or two nice thick slices of whole wheat bread. Fresh, crispy lettuce is the bedding between the bottom piece of bread and the salad; I prefer a mild, thin slice of cheese like baby Swiss or Provolone.  Maybe you'd like Cheddar or American;  tomato or pickles; if that is what you'd like, but personally I don't want to add so many extras that I lose the essence of the chicken salad itself.

Basically, when it comes to buying canned chicken or premade chicken salad at the deli counter, consider buying fresh chicken and creating your own salad.  You'll thank yourself later on.  Enjoy!

Mary Cokenour

An Awesome Mexican Adventure.

Recently I purchased two cookbooks from the Monticello Welcome Center; "Authentic Southwestern Cooking" by Lynn Nusom and "Southwest Slow Cooking" by Tammy Biber and Theresa Howell.  Going through both, I found several recipes I wanted to try out, and enjoyed reading some of the stories and informational tidbits in both books.  I was watching Travel Channel's "Mexican Food Paradise"; then Food Network's "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives" had an episode which featured New Mexico places; so you can see a pattern was starting to develop in what I was to cook next. 

Speaking with my hubby, he suggested I make a Mexican style casserole, but put rotini pasta in it.  I thought about it, but didn't like the pasta idea; pasta is Italian, I already made two Italian pasta dishes last week.  So, do I use one of the recipes out of the cookbooks, or look up recipes from the shows I had watched?  I did better than either choice, I combined both ideas plus my recipes for Chicken Enchiladas and Fiesta Salsa. To say that I came up with something absolutely amazing is to say too little. The taste and texture blew my mind; I wanted to just lay down on the floor and experience what I had just eaten with orgasmic pleasure. It is not often that I feel this way about a particular meal; but this was certainly a most excellent adventure!

Once again I'll be posting a load of photos, so I hope you'll enjoy the visual show as well as trying out this recipe.

 

 

Fiesta Chicken Enchiladas

Ingredients:

8 chicken tenderloins
¼ cup lime juice
2 Tbsp chopped cilantro
½ tsp cumin
1 tsp New Mexico chile powder (medium)
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 (15 oz) can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 (15 oz) can whole kernel corn, drained
1 (15 oz) can diced tomatoes with green chiles, drained (medium)
8 (10 inch) flour tortillas
2 cups green chile sauce (medium)
8 Tbsp salted butter
8 Tbsp flour
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup milk
½ tsp ground black pepper
1 (8 oz) package shredded Mexican cheese mix

Preparation:





Trim the chicken tenderloins of any fat or excess ligament; place in a sealable plastic bag with the lime juice, cilantro, cumin and chile powder. Move chicken around in bag to make sure all is coated with the marinade; place in refrigerator for one hour. In a large skillet, heat olive oil on medium-high heat; sear chicken two minutes on each side and drain on paper towels. Chicken will still be raw inside, but will finish cooking during the baking process.

To Make the Enchiladas

In a large bowl, mix together the black beans, corn and tomatoes with green chiles.

 Place 4 tablespoons in the center of a tortilla; spread out far enough to be a half inch around the chicken.

Place a chicken tenderloin in the center of the “salsa”; fold the tortilla over both ends of the chicken, but leave 3 inches apart.

Take one side of the tortilla and fold over to make an “envelope”; slowly roll towards the open side, tucking in sides if necessary, to seal the “packet”.

Don't worry if each "packet" is not perfectly symmetrical or look exactly like each other.  Once the layers of sauce are on, no one will see the imperfections. If someone does, then feel proud that these are homemade; not bought at the supermarket's frozen food section and machine made.

 

Preheat oven to 350F; spray a 4 quart baking dish with nonstick spray. Place each packet, seam side down, inside the dish. Spread the green chile sauce over the packets and bake for 20 minutes.

To Make the Cheese Sauce

Melt the butter, medium-high heat, in a medium sauce pan; whisk in the flour as soon as tiny bubbles begin to form in the melted butter. Continue to whisk as the mixture begins to turn a pale brownish color; add the heavy cream, milk and black pepper and let mixture come to a low boil. Whisk in half the shredded cheese until melted; do same for second half of cheese and continue to whisk until smooth.




After 20 minutes, take enchiladas out of oven and spread cheese sauce completely over all. Return dish to the oven and bake an additional 10 minutes.
 

Remove from oven and let it rest for 10 minutes to allow cheese sauce to firm up around the enchiladas.  Let me tell you that the cheese poofs up into this wonderful fluffy layer of cheesy cloud.  The texture is so soft and smooth, not the typical chewy layer when cheese is just dumped on an enchilada and allowed to melt.

Cutting open the enchilada, you see the vibrant colors of the beans, corn and tomatoes; the chicken is tender and juicy; the flavors of the lime and cilantro pop; and the cheese sauce layer...a celestial cloud.  Enjoy!

Makes 8 servings.

Mary Cokenour

My Version of Five Ingredient Fix - Italian with an Asian Guest.

Anyone who is a home cook has been in this situation: need to make a meal for the family, not in the mood to cook, don't want to order take out or go to a restaurant, have no clue what to prepare.  You look in the freezer, the refrigerator, the pantry and think if you should tear your hair out or just serve cereal with milk.  Breathe in...breathe out...breathe in...breathe out...calm...calm...now think.  Suddenly you see an item in the freezer and remember another one from the pantry; yes, they'll work together, but what else?  Back to the refrigerator, oh my, what you just found that would compliment the other two ingredients; the next thing you know, you have five ingredients sitting on the counter and a recipe formulating in your mind.

Not only did I play this game with myself over the weekend, but I ended up playing it with my friend Heidi.  I don't truly like calling it "five ingredient fix", after the show on Food Network Channel; instead I've given it my own title that befits more the home cook, "What the Hell is in My Pantry!?!"  While Heidi ended up making a delicious meatloaf with mashed potatoes - American comfort food; I ended up making a pasta dish with shrimp and edamame - Italian comfort food with a little Asian undertone (the edamame), but I would not call this "fusion" cuisine.

Here are my five ingredients:

Lets go over each one separately before putting them all together as a skillet dinner.

Tortellini are little circles of pasta dough filled typically with a ricotta cheese filling; however nowadays they can be filled with spinach and cheese, chicken, roasted peppers, mushrooms, ground beef, even Italian sausage.  This pasta is usually found in three forms: dry, frozen or fresh.  Here's a little tip about cooking, not just tortellini, but any pasta; you do not have to add salt or oil to the boiling water to keep the pasta from sticking.  Say what!?!  That's correct, as soon as you put the pasta in the boiling water, immediately begin to stir it for one minute in a circular motion.  When you add the pasta, it decreases the temperature of the water slightly and the boiling diminishes; by stirring, the friction will help the water get back to the boiling point much faster than if you just let it stand.  After the pasta is cooked to your desired doneness, then you can season it with salt, herbs, olive oil, or add it to whatever recipe you're making immediately upon draining.  After I cooked my one pound package of frozen tortellini, it was drained and then mixed with three tablespoons of olive oil.

During the week I had made a different pasta dish using a homemade sauce I had made from processing fresh tomatoes, but had two cups leftover in the fridge.  If you have never had a sauce made from fresh tomatoes, then you have surely missed out on an experience. The taste, smell, texture is simply incredible; much better than using canned tomatoes and most definitely nothing, NOTHING, you'll get from a brand name jarred sauce.  I also used two cups of diced tomatoes to add further texture to the dish, and all those little pieces of tomato just looked so pretty too.  Remember, you eat with your eyes as well as your mouth.

In the freezer were a 12 ounce bag of steamed shrimp and a 16 ounce bag of edamame which had been purchased for a different recipe.  However, they just begged to be used now; the shrimp was already cooked, so needed no work done to it.  The edamame was put into a boiling pot of water for five minutes, then drained.  Now it was time to put it all together in one skillet.

In a 12 inch deep skillet, heat the sauce and diced tomatoes on medium-high heat, add the tortellini as soon as the sauce begins to form bubbles.   As you can see, the tortellini was not sticking together because of the oil I had mixed with it before hand.  Let cook for two minutes before adding...

...the shrimp and edamame.  Mix all the ingredients together and continue to cook for five minutes; taste to make sure everything has been thoroughly heated before serving, continue to cook additional minutes if necessary.  Be careful though, you don't want to overcook that shrimp and turn it into rubber bands.

There you have it, my own version of "Five Ingredient Fix" or "What the Hell is in My Pantry!?!"; isn't that so pretty, all those colors just popping out from the dish.  I did not have to add any seasoning as the grated cheese and herbs from the pasta sauce, and olive oil on the tortellini, did all the work.

Next time you're in a fit about what to fix for dinner; remember breathe, calm and think.

Mary Cokenour

Eat Fresh...at Subway???

Have you seen the Arby's commercials with New York private investigator, Bo Dietl; where he exposes Subway's cold cut sandwich products as being "unfresh"?  He states that their products are sliced and prepackaged at a processing plant in Iowa.  Now no matter if cold cuts are cut directly in front of you, like at a supermarket deli counter, or presliced and packaged elsewhere; lets be honest, cold cuts are cold cuts.  Unless you roast your own and then slice it up of course.

My beef, pardon the pun, with Subway is the making of the sandwich itself; the prenumbering of cold cut slices each sandwich receives.  As an experiment, I drove around to different Subway locations in my area, ordered the same sandwich with the same ingredients, and received, pretty much, a clone after clone after clone.  The sandwich?  The 12 inch Black Forest Ham and Turkey for $7 (sub only) on a wheat roll (plain roll if wheat was unavailable) with lettuce, banana pepper rings, oil and vinegar.  Each Subway gave me exactly 4 slices of ham, 4 slices of turkey with a whopping handful of shredded lettuce and pepper rings, but just a drizzle each of the oil and vinegar.  By the way, I asked about the 6 inch sub; you get exactly half of what is in the 12 inch for $4 (sub only). Their 6 inch sub is also one of their 12 inchers cut in half; what do they do with that other half anyway? Is it kept and served to another customer? Is it discarded in the trash bin? Is it thrown outside for birds and animals to nibble on? Basically, is food used or wasted?

 

I continued my culinary investigative work by going to the supermarket, buying the ingredients I needed and make my own version of this Subway sandwich.  A package of rolls (7 inch in length), packages of Black Forest Ham and Oven Roasted Turkey (extra lean and gluten free), Banana Pepper Rings, Olive Oil and Red Wine Vinegar cost me, in total: $15.42 with tax; Subway charges tax on their sandwiches too. 

  The slices of cold cuts were larger than the ones served at Subway by two inches, and I was able to put 3 slices of each on each sandwich...one more slice of each than Subway's 6 inch.  Subway layers their cold cuts flat while I folded mine; more appealing to the eye I believe.  I layered on a nice bed of lettuce for the cold cuts to sit upon, but not so much that it overwhelmed.

  A nice serving of banana pepper rings for a sweet crunch; sometimes when I'm in the mood for it, I mix in slivers of red onion between those pepper rings. Not today though.   I'm generous with the oil and vinegar; what doesn't stay on the bread seeps onto the plate.  Then I can dip any dry pieces of the roll into the excess oil/vinegar mixture as I eat my sandwich; it's a decadent pleasure.

...and there is my version of Subway's Black Forest Ham and Turkey sub. Price wise, I can make six-7 inch subs for the price of 2-12 inch Subway subs, or 3-6 inch Subway subs. Taste, Texture and Appearance wise, my homemade version is outstanding!!!  As you can see in the photo, I didn't squash my sandwich together either, but Subway does.  Why do they squash the sandwiches when they wrap them?  That's so annoying!

Subway is fast food; Homemade is fresh food; yes, there is a big difference.

Mary Cokenour

Sorry Knight Rider, This Baked Potato Wasn't Named For You.

In Germany, David Hasselhoff of "Knight Rider" fame is treated more like a god than just another actor.  However, in Stockholm, Sweden, it is not every restaurant that gets a dish named after it.  The Hasselbacken Hotel (opened in 1748) introduced a new potato dish on its menu in the 1940's...The Hasselback Potato.  While you could say it is just a baked potato,  the way it is prepared and looks distinguishes it from just any old baked potato.  Slits are cut crosswise along the length of the potato, careful to leave 1/4 of an inch uncut at its bottom.  A bread crumb topping is loaded on top and pushed slightly into the slits; olive oil and butter gives a slightly naughty decadence to the fanned out potato.  This type of potato dish is also called in Ireland "Accordion Potatoes" for its resemblance to the musical instrument.  In France, with the addition of Parmesan cheese, it is known as a "Potato Fan".

The recipe I made and will give instruction for is the original recipe from the Hasselbacken Hotel.  A medium sized, oval potato is best when serving as a side dish.  The large is best if serving this potato dish as a meal in itself.  Small potatoes, such as Fingerlings, do not fare well during the cutting and baking processes.  Originally, the topping was simply dried bread crumbs, salt, ground black pepper and butter; olive oil was a cooking medium.  Of course nowadays, the addition of cheeses, herbs, vegetables and/or bacon can give this potato dish a whole new swing.  If using cheese, it is best to use a grated texture from a hard rind type of cheese such as Parmigiano-Reggiano or Parmesan mixed into the dried bread crumbs. A quickly melting cheese such as Cheddar or Swiss could be used, but in the final 15 minutes of the baking process; however the chance of covering up the "fan" effect is very possible. 

For the addition of bacon, slice bacon strips into one inch pieces, freeze them solid and then insert into the cuts randomly; about 5-6 pieces per potato.  As the potatoes bake, the bacon fat will melt to give the potato extra fluffiness and deep bacon flavoring.  Chopped fresh herbs and/or petite diced vegetables such as green onion or mushrooms need to be mixed in melted butter, spooned over the potatoes and baked during the final 15 minutes.  You want these items to warm up, but not be thoroughly roasted into obscurity.  The olive oil that sits in the bottom of the baking dish will give the potato a golden browned, crusty bottom to sit upon...sort of like getting a baked and fried potato at the same time.

The Hasselback Potato

 

 

Ingredients:

 

4 Tbsp olive oil

2 long baking potatoes (about 6 oz each)

1/4 cup plain dried bread crumbs

1/4 tsp salt

1/8 tsp ground black pepper

4 Tbsp melted butter

 

Preparation:

 

 

Peel each potato; cut a 1/4 inch slice from one long side of the potato.  This will allow it to lay flat and not roll during the cutting or baking processes.  Place a clean rubber band around the potato, 1/4 inch up from the flat bottom, to use as a guide.  With a sharp knife, make 1/8 inch slices crosswise along the entire length of the potato being careful not to go past the rubber band.  Remove the rubber band and immerse the potatoes in cold water for 5 minutes; slightly move the slices apart, but be careful not to break them; this will help remove extra starch from the potatoes and keep them from turning brown.

Preheat oven to 450F; coat bottom of small baking dish (large enough to accommodate both potatoes, but leave room between each) with olive oil.

In a small bowl, mix together the bread crumbs, salt, black pepper and one tablespoon of butter.  Remove potatoes from water, pat dry and brush with a half tablespoon of butter; press the bread crumb mixture onto each potato; use the dull side of a knife to slightly press a little mixture into some of the potato slits.  Place potatoes into the baking dish, cover with aluminum foil and bake for 50 minutes.  Remove the foil, drizzle a tablespoon of the remaining butter over each potato; bake for an additional 15 minutes.

Makes two servings.

So instead of a plain baked potato, try something a little more fancy...a Hasselhoff; oops, sorry; a Hasselback Potato.  Enjoy!

Mary Cokenour

I've Got Big Balls - Matzo Balls.

For about a week or so the temperatures in our area were in the high 50's to low 60's; sunny, clear skies and a light breeze coming down off the mountains. Simply beautiful weather for the spring, and it was an inspiration to get outside and do some yard cleaning. On April 2nd I decided to take a ride across to Cortez, Colorado to do a little shopping, enjoy a nice lunch of a tarragon chicken salad sandwich, and then do the leisurely drive back home. As I got closer and closer to the Colorado/Utah border, I noticed the dark clouds beginning to travel my way. Rain, I thought, oh the dry, dusty yard will love that! A few miles over the Utah border the rain began, nothing heavy until I drove a few more miles. Thicker rain coming down now...thicker? Snow showers? Really!?! As I began entering the city limits of Monticello, the fat, white flakes were coming down and sticking to any grassy areas; fortunately not to the streets or roadways. The temperature at the end of this debacle was about 25 F, the wind had picked up and it was a bitter cold. Now I would have appreciated the irony of all this if it had occurred the day before on April Fool's Day; now I was just miffed.

How did I get over all this? Chicken soup of course, but not just any old chicken soup...Matzo Ball soup. That's right, a recipe from Jewish culture that is the ultimate comfort food; the cure all of any ailment (or so we pretend to believe). I was introduced to many foods related to Jewish cuisine when I lived in Brooklyn, New York...Noodle Kugel, Bagels, Lox, Matzo Ball Soup, Pastrami, Corned Beef, etc, etc, etc.   Basically, in the five boroughs of New York and Long Island, you were either Catholic or Jewish; and the big influences in foods were Italian, Irish, Slavic or Jewish.   That was the true meaning of America's "melting pot" back then; and even today, New York is still the number one area to see that meaning of immigration.  But I digress....

Homemade Chicken Stock is an essential main ingredients for this soup; you want all the richness of flavor from the chicken, vegetables and seasonings, cooked together to create perfection. When I say "chicken carcass" in the recipe, basically you want to buy a whole chicken, remove the legs, thighs and breasts; what is left is what goes into the soup pot.  Remove as much skin as you can too.  Oh, and why leave the onions unpeeled?  It will give your stock a nice, golden coloring.

Homemade Chicken Stock

3 to 4 lbs of chicken carcass (legs, thighs and breasts removed)
3 large celery ribs, chopped
3 large carrots, peeled and chopped
1 large leek, washed thoroughly and chopped; include most of the green section as well
2 medium onions, unpeeled, but remove the root end
1 (8 oz) container whole mushrooms; dirt brushed off
6 cloves of garlic, unpeeled
2 whole bay leaves
1 Tbsp whole black peppercorns
1 Tbsp Kosher salt
5 quarts cold water

Preparation:

Place all ingredients in a large stock pot (10-12 quart); bring to a boil on high heat and skim off any frothy residue. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 3 hours. 

Secure cheese cloth inside a large plastic bowl and strain the stock into the bowl; discard all the solid material captured in the cheese cloth.  Place the plastic bowl inside the freezer for one hour; the fat will solidify and then can be easily removed.   The stock is now ready to be used, can be refrigerated for up to 3 days, or stored in the freezer for up to 3 months. 

Makes about 4 1/2 quarts.

Traditionally, to make an authentic soup, "schmaltz" should be added.  Schmaltz is rendered chicken fat; not the skin of the chicken, but the gobs of gelatinous fat underneath the skin.  The chickens you find at the local supermarket are bred to be lean, so the amount of fat you'll need ( 2 cups) is about impossible to get off the chicken.  You might be able to find a local butcher who can help you obtain what you need; but don't worry about it if you can't.

Schmaltz

Ingredients:

2 cups chicken fat, chopped
1 small onion, chopped

Preparation:

Place fat and onion in a large skillet, over low heat; let cook for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.  The fat will melt and begin to brown; when it is all a golden brown; remove from heat and use a slotted spoon to remove all the crisp bits (gribenes).  The liquid left is the schmaltz; the gribenes can be used in the matzo balls, or other recipes.  Strain the schmaltz through cheese cloth to remove any excess gribenes or residue to get a clear liquid.

Makes about 3/4 cup.

Now lets get to the star of this show, the Matzo Balls.  Matzo is a crisp, dry unleavened bread made with three ingredients: flour, water and salt.  It is primarily eaten during the Jewish Festival of Freedom, Passover.   To make the Matzo Balls, the Matzo is crushed into a coarse powder called matzo meal.  There are two types of balls, "floaters" and "sinkers"; floaters are large, light and fluffy, sitting gently in the soup; sinkers are denser, smaller and tend to sit at the bottom of the soup bowl. To make the "floaters" add seltzer water to your recipe; to make "sinkers" use chicken stock instead.

 

How to Make Matzo Balls

 

Ingredients:

1/2 cup matzo meal
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2 Tbsp Schmaltz (or vegetable oil if you don't have Schmaltz)
1 tsp Kosher salt
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
2 Tbsp seltzer water (floaters) or chicken stock (sinkers)

Option: add 2 Tbsp gribenes

Preparation:

Combine all ingredients together in a small bowl; cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes. 

This will eventually make about 10-12 one inch balls.

Soup Time!!!

Place three quarts of chicken stock into a large pot (6-8 quart) and bring to a boil on medium-high heat.  While the stock is heating up, begin rolling your matzo ball "batter" into one inch balls.  Hint:  wet your hands with cold water each time to keep the "batter" from sticking.  When the stock is boiling, gently add the balls one at a time; cover the pot and cook for 30-40 minutes; they're ready when they triple in size and are floating in the simmering stock.

Options: you can add some thinly sliced carrot when you first begin bringing the stock to boil and let it continue to cook with the matzo balls.

Garnishes: sliced green onion or fresh dill.

So there you have a little adventure into Jewish cuisine.  Enjoy!

Mary Cokenour

Parmigiano's Evil Twin; Parmesan.

You go out to an Italian restaurant and order "Chicken Parmigiana" (a strictly Italian-American invented recipe by the way); lightly fried breasts of chicken smothered in a rich tomato sauce and covered in melted, gooey cheeses. Then you open up a cooking magazine, or see a recipe online called "Chicken Parmesan" and think, "Oh, that's what I had at the restaurant, and now I can make it at home". No, no, it is not the same thing; might look similar, but there are big differences. In Italy, the D.O.C. (Denominazione di Origine Controllata) is a set of Italian laws enacted in 1955 to protect the names, origins, production methods and characteristics of Italian food and wine; they set the standards. Parmigiano-Reggiano has been produced in Italy over 700 years; it is a complexity of flavors, made from cow's milk, with a hard rind, and aged, crumbly interior. Each wheel of authentic Parmigiano is stamped with a seal which indicates its name, date of creation and a code which specifies where it was made. (see left side photo)  Once the wheel is opened the cheese can be grated, shredded or cut into paper thin slices; the price is high, but well worth the taste, texture and quality.

Then comes Parmigiano's evil twin, Parmesan; you know that cheese, it sits on a shelf in the pasta aisle in a green can, or perhaps a jar; grated and so very, very cheap in price. As you can see in the right side photo, the wheel has no markings on it indicating name, date or origin.  Typically Parmesan is not produced in Italy, is granular in texture and of very poor quality. When you see that recipe for "Chicken Parmesan" which says to coat your chicken in grated Parmesan; now you know what kind of cheese you're actually using, an imitation.   Don't get me wrong, it has its uses, but not as a substitute for Parmigiano-Reggiano.

Now we get to, "So Parmigiana stands for Parmigiano?"  Sort of; Parmigiana stands for "cooked in the way of Parma" which is one of the major producers of Parmigiano-Reggiano.  However, Parma is in Northern Italy, whereas this type of meal comes primarily from the South; so it comes back to, "It's all about the cheese!"  Meat or poultry is pounded thin, dipped in egg wash, coated in bread crumbs and lightly fried.  It is then smothered in tomato sauce and covered with, what else, Parmigiano cheese and baked until the cheese is melted and browned around the edges.  Depending on the area in Italy, different versions of Parmigiana use mozzarella cheese, provolone cheese or a mixture of the three.  Those "Parmesan" recipes you see in magazines or online usually tell you to coat the meat or poultry in mayonnaise, coat liberally with the cheese and bake to get a crispy texture; sauce is usually an option or side.

This is all leading to today's recipe for Eggplant Parmigiana, but I'm going to put a real twist on the usual recipe.  Typically I would do the layering of fried eggplant with sauce and cheese; instead though, I'm using a very chunky vegetarian sauce.  Think of it as a vegetable lasagna using the eggplant in place of pasta noodles.

I mixed the grated Parmigiano-Reggiano into my ground bread crumbs, while I used Sargento's new Chef Blend 6 Cheese Italian mixture in the layering and baking processes.

In the making of my Vegetarian Pasta Sauce, I cut up portabella mushrooms, green and red bell peppers, onions and zucchini into one inch chunks; no eggplant was added this time as it was being used elsewhere.   I also added a cup of grated carrot to add sweetness to the sauce.  Once the sauce was done, I left it chunky instead of smoothing it out with my immersion blender.

The size of the eggplant is dependent on how much you intend to make, and what size baking dish. I used an aluminum loaf pan which you might typically use to make a quick bread or pound cake. After removing the top and bottom, I peeled the tough outer layer off and then cut the eggplant into 14 - 1/4 inch round slices. I could have made long slices instead, but felt the smaller round slices would come out more easily from the pan, and be more appealing to the eye.

First I lightly coated each slice with flour; I did this to create a barrier for the frying oil. I then dipped them in an eggwash and coated them with the bread crumb/Parmigiano mixture. Eggplant is basically a spongy vegetable and will easily sop up and retain oil that it is fried in. You want to use an oil that has a high fry temperature, such as peanut or canola oils; the eggplant can then be "flash fried", so the outside is nicely browned and crispy, but the eggplant itself has not been soaked in the oil.

Drain the fried eggplant well on paper towels to make sure any extra oil is drawn out; you want to retain that crispy outer coating without a greasy texture within. When they're all done, time to start the layering process. Preheat the oven to 400F.

Spread 1/4 cup of simply the tomato sauce on the bottom of the pan. Place 3-4 slices of the fried eggplant and sprinkle 1/4 cup of cheese over them.  Spread more sauce, but make sure to put a good helping of the chunky vegetables; repeat this layering twice more.

 
But on the final layer, spread 1/2 cup of the cheese overall.

  Cover the pan with aluminum foil; make sure there is space between the foil and cheese, so the cheese doesn't stick to it as it bakes. Bake for 30 minutes; remove the foil and bake an additional 5 minutes to allow the cheese to brown around the edges.

Allow the eggplant to rest for 5 minutes; the sauce may have stopped bubbling once you removed the pan from the oven, but it's still bubbling internally. You want it all to settle before serving. So there you have it, Eggplant Parmigiana, but done up in a type of "lasagna" style with chunky vegetables in the sauce. The loaf pan I used makes a hefty two portions, or three portions for those petite eaters....it won't make it to three once you see, smell and taste this dish. Enjoy this Italian adventure!

Mary Cokenour