martha stewart's baked-eggplant parmesan

For the first time ever I made a successful eggplant parmesan. This was entirely due to Martha Stewart's ingenious method: baking instead of frying.

You see, eggplant is super absorbent, on the level of cotton balls, and I don't know about you, but every time I've ever made anything with eggplant it ended up a soggy oil slick of a mess. This time I followed Stewart's recipe and baked the darn stuff and... presto it remained dry and crunchy on the outside, smooth and creamy on the inside. Brilliant!

I altered the recipe a bit by using fake mozzarella and while it did melt and get oozy, like mozzarella should, on the bottom layers, it did not melt on top. Plus, it has a funny under taste so I wouldn't advise that you do the same. Even so this dish came out really good and I will definitely bake some eggplant again.

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