Recipe Review from 8/31/09

Both the Mother and I receive a variety of cooking magazines. Currently I subscribe to Cooking Light, Eating Well, and Vegetarian Times. I had a long time subscription to Cooks Illustrated, but after 8 years it became a bit to repetitive for me. And I did try out Rachel Ray's magazine for a couple of years, but lost interest and didn't renew.

The Mother currently subscribes to Fine Cooking, Everyday Food, and the Food Network Magazine. It's the Fine Cooking that I find myself either stealing from her or picking up off the newsstand. I think the magazine has an eye catching layout, doesn't come across as pretentious like Bon Appetite or Gourmet, and the articles are well written.

I picked up the Aug/Sept 2009 issue from the newsstands and was drawn to this recipe:

Classic Eggplant Parmigiana (Fine Cooking, Aug/Sept 09, pg 78)

I liked to it as it is rather long to type out and I did do some significant changes:

Recipe calls for frying the eggplant. I just thinly sliced, sprayed with olive oil and baked it. Traditional? Probably not, but a heck of a lot easier in the assembly and time department. Baked @ 450* for about 20 minutes - enough time to assemble and cook the sauce.

I also thinly sliced and baked some zucchini and added it to the layers. To be truthful, my eggplant wasn't big enough after I had to cut out a yucky spot so I needed something extra on the fly. Zucchini was a nice addition.

Recipe states to saute garlic halves in olive oil before adding tomatoes, then remove toward the end of the cooking process. Seems a waste of perfectly good garlic so I diced it, sauteed and added the tomatoes.

I did use canned diced tomatoes. Just as good and 10x easier. Definitely drain. I was concerned there wouldn't be enough liquid and ended up with too much.

Assembly was as called for - layer just like a lasagna - and bake till cheese is golden and bubbly on top. This made a 9x9 dish. I got a good nine servings out of it. I do recommend baking in a glass dish though - tomatoes tend to react in a metal dish and I think it gives a pasta dish a slightly off taste.

I would make this again with the above modifications.