Davide Megna: Hello, I am Davide Megna from Amici Miei Ristorante in Rockville Maryland. And today I am going to show you how to make Eggplant Parmesan.

Now, we are going to start cleaning the eggplant like this, taking the skin off with a little knife or you can also use a potato peeler.

Now, once you have finished peeling the eggplant we are going to slice them about half inch thick. Then I am going to take a colander with a bowl underneath and I am going to place the slices of eggplant into the colander one next to the other one and layer them with a little bit of salt, then we are going to make another layer. We are going to add more salt, so salt on each layer basically.

This salt would allow for the eggplant to drain the water dab. So after I put the salt, I am going to put a little aluminum plate, you can use just the regular plate or anything like that and something very heavy on top of your eggplant, that would really squeeze all the water out otherwise you will have eggplant soggy and full of water after you have cooked them.

We have got to let them sit for about hour and a half to two hours no more than that. Now we are getting ready to fry them. Use frying oil, bring it to a hot temperature.

We choose to bread the eggplant just with flour, before you dip the entire eggplant, make sure the temperature is right, so just dip a little piece. In this case the oil is perfectly on temperature so we are going to drop the eggplant, just going to keep throwing eggplant and not too many of them, otherwise they will lower the temperature of your oil and make your eggplant soggy. And then fry them to a nice golden color. We start from one side and we will flip it over to the other side.

Okay, once the eggplant has a golden color in both sides, we can remove it from the oil with a tong and place it into a paper towel to absorb all the oil that is in excess. So now I am going to start with wetting the bottom of our Pyrex with a little bit of tomato sauce that would allow the eggplant not to stick. And I am going to start layering the eggplant. Some tomato sauce, a little bit of mozzarella, some Parmesan cheese, then I do another eggplant, little tomato sauce again.

One more pinch of Parmesan cheese, some more fresh mozzarella, some more eggplant, more tomatoes to cover the slice, fresh mozzarella and parmesan cheese. We are going to now cook it in the oven about 400 degrees for about 20-25 minutes.

Now with a spatula, I am going to remove the eggplant, plate it into a nice white plate, garnish with a couple of leaves of basil and that's how you prepare Eggplant Parmesan. So it came out very, very nicely.

1