Try this amazing Mediterranean Winter Warmer
I love making — and eating — this filling and nutritious parmigiana. Following a Mediterranean-style diet is supposed to make you live longer or, at least, improve life expectancy. Living longer is one thing, having a good quality of life in later years is, for me, far more important so building on my good eating habits (and maybe cutting down on the bad) seems a sensible move.
Confession: I’m a Guardian reader. One headline that caught my attention in their supplement, some time ago, ran along the lines of: Ten Mediterranean Recipes to Help You Live longer — this seemed worth a read and led me to try a few of said recipes. Alongside each recipe ran the usual blurb about how the recipe had been developed, selecting from a range of possible ingredients and celebrity-chef methods. I’ve used the various sources in the blurb, with a few ideas of my own thrown in, to develop my own take on this delicious, surprisingly-warming and three-of-your-ten-a-day-providing parmigiana di melanzane.
Here’s a link if you want to compare: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/feb/27/ten-great-mediterranean-recipes
For info only: you can access and read Guardian and Observer articles online for free. I subscribe and get to read at least part of the paper on my Kindle every day — tip-top.
A couple of health warnings: this recipe involves a generous pouring of white wine, which will — unless you are tee-total or have a will of iron — lead to you taking a generous slurp or two from the remainder in the bottle and this recipe contains a high-ish quantity of cheese. So, if you’re trying for dairy-free or watching your cholesterol, chuck in a suitable plant-based sub.
One big health bonus: my recipe contains onion, tomato and aubergine and, as previously stated, ticks off three fruit and veg portions — golden! Chuck together a salad to serve with it and you’ll be hitting five or six of those ten helpings, almost without noticing.
One key element of my version of the recipe is that I cut the aubergine length-wise and then cut into slices, giving me fork-sized pieces and removing the need for diners to use a knife to cut larger pieces— this add a slight but welcome informality to eating and saves a tiny bit on washing up!?!
I don’t bother salting the aubergine to remove any bitterness as I like the bitter taste and I’ve never found the salting makes any difference anyhow! As for leaving it in a colander: well you could but I’ve never found a single drop to drain off the aubergine, salt added or not.
A brief word on tomatoes: to keep prep as easy-peasy as you can, use tinned, chopped tomatoes. If, on the other hand, you don’t mind your method being slightly hardy-pardy, chop your own — this will work better if you can buy them as large and as ripe as possible (local grocery stores are often better for this than supermarkets).
The recipe that follows provides enough of a main course for two people — scale up accordingly if needed — I feel that, with salad accompaniment, this is filling enough and, with all the cheese, quite calorific, but you might want to serve with a little pasta or a nice, crusty, buttered, possibly-garlic bread.
Start by heating the oven to 180 celcius and grease an oven-proof dish that looks like you might be able to squeeze all the ingredients in.
Top and tail a large aubergine — that’s the melanzane (just in case) — and, slicing length-wise, cut it into quarters; cut these quarters cross-wise into 1cm slices. Leave to one side.
Prepare the cheese by slicing 200g ish of mozzarella and grating about 100g Parmesan or similar. (Consider reducing your carbon footprint by using non-dairy substitutes if you can — they are particularly acceptable in cooking and the mozzarella sub won’t annoy you with persistent stringiness !)
Grate or zzzsh in a food processor, a slice or crust of whatever bread you have handy — you might fancy adding a few nuts, crackers or crisps for extra crunch. Mix this in a bowl with the Parmesan and stir in a dessert-spoon of olive oil if you like.
Put a large frying pan on a medium heat with a couple of tablespoons of your favourite oil (I use olive oil— when in Rome). Meanwhile, peel and then cut up one very large or two medium onions, anyhow you like — you’re going to puree the result in any case — and pop them in the oil — you’re going to fry them until nice and brown.
While the onion fries gently, peel a couple of garlic cloves and slice them as thinly as you can. Chuck them in with the onion and continue to cook for two minutes while you chop some tomatoes (two large or three medium will do) or open a tin of ready chopped. Add these to the pan and cook until the fruit breaks down; if you’ve chopped your own tomatoes add a squirt of tomato puree, followed by a couple of teaspoons of your favourite herbs (oregano and basil with a pair of bay leaves do for me) and pour in 150ml of white wine. Stir well, bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer until half of the liquid evaporates.
With the onion, tomato, herbs and wine mix reducing down, you can decide what method to use to par cook the aubergine slices — I usually put water, with a little salt, in a small pan, to a one centimetre depth, bring that to the boil, pile in the aubergine and steam it for a minute or so. Drain and put it to one side. You can fry the aubergine, if you like, as this might add a little richness to the flavour, or you could place the slices in boiling water and leave to soften for a few minutes. You could instead fry half and steam the rest, over to you…
At this stage, you might like to blitz the tomatoes and co with a hand blender for a few seconds. Alternatively give it a mash or leave it chunky. Pour about half of the sauce into a casserole dish or similar, then add a layer of about half of the steamed aubergine slices. Next place the mozzarella slices over the aubergine. Add another layer of sauce and aubergine before topping of with the breadcrumb and Parmesan mix. Bung this into the oven and bake for about 20 min.
You’ll have spotted that we’re two portions of veg short of a nice five-a-day meal. How about an easy green salad to top up? You could chuck in a green salad of your choice — may be something with a little rosso, water cress or rocket to keep the Mediterranean feel — but I wouldn’t recommend adding too much (maybe a handful per person) and I would suggest chopping it up (and possibly removing any spinach first) to reduce the chewiness.
Then cut an avocado in half, spoon out the stone then spoon the flesh out of the skin; chop into bite-size chunks.
Next take half a cucumber, cut lengthways into quarters and slice crossways into 1cm chunks. Then slice a good handful of spring onions.
You should now have assembled enough greens to make up two healthy portions — if in doubt, mix in a handful of raw peas or chunks of apple.
Make a dressing by whisking together two dessert spoons of olive oil, one of white vinegar and a teaspoon of mustard — I prefer the strong taste of Colman’s, although wholegrain will add a little crunch — dare you to lick the spoon after !!
Combine the salad with the dressing and serve alongside the parmigiana, with a little pasta or nice bread.
