(This ain't no) Eggplant Parmesan

I have a sort of history with Eggplant Parmesan, as I grew up as much in my friend Karen's house as I did in my own, so you could say that I was raised by Neapolitans. Her father was generally the cook, and I came running around the block every time I heard him tossing a salad. But it was Nanny who taught me to make eggplant parmesan. The eggplant had to be sliced paper-thin, you dipped the slices in egg and then dredged in seasoned breadcrumbs, you fried them all individually, and then you packed them in tight layers with rich sauce ("red gravy") and spices and mozzarella, and baked it until it bubbled. It is beyond gorgeous, but it takes a lot of time and work.

The next historical incident was when I was living with a bunch of other graduate students in a communal household known as the Ali Ben Buddha Society, in Brookline Massachusetts. Even then I loved city markets (and bargains), and one Saturday at the Haymarket in Boston, I somehow ended up paying only a dollar or two for eleven eggplants. I brought them home, assembled the proper ingredients, and began frying. Four hours later, I was able to assemble it all in a giant turkey-roasting-pan, and I set it to baking. At dinnertime, I served it with some fanfare to my ten hungry housemates. It was gone in ten minutes. Its only memorial was the resulting recipe in our communal cookbook, entitled "A Shitload of Eggplant Parmesan."

So, last week we had gotten a few eggplants - Japanese, not Italian or American - from the Pepper People at Findlay Market. They were nice, but we had no real plans for them. And Lynne had happened to leave most of a jar of Emeril's Roasted Garlic Tomato Sauce in our refrigerator. We don't eat prepared sauces, especially if they say "BAM!" when you open them, but we also hate waste. Could we make a quasi-eggplant parmesan out of these two remainders? Problem was, after a long day sweating over scholarship (and blogs), we didn't have time for all that breading and frying. So we tried an experiment: we sliced the eggplant with the Benriner, dipped it in seasoned extra-virgin oil, and spread it out on trays in the oven to roast, rather than fry. We thickened the sauce with some tomato paste, and mixed in chopped fresh oregano leaves. Then we began layering them together with grated mozzarella. Unfortunately, there was WAY too little eggplant, especially without the breading to give it body, and WAY too much sauce for the two thin layers we ended up with. But anything with bubbling golden mozzarella on top of it is still okay in my book, even if it ain't eggplant parmesan.