Melanzane alla parmigiana

Not in Artusi, who has several aubergine dishes but not this one. The parmigiana as it is eaten now is Southern, claimed by Campania and by Sicily with equal conviction, and the argument about whose it is has outlasted everyone who started it.

The name is probably not about Parma. The likelier root is parmiciana, the overlapping slats of a shutter, which is exactly how the aubergine is layered.

Ingredients

Serves 4.

	Metric	Imperial
Aubergines	1 kg	2.2 lb
Passata or crushed tomatoes	700 g	25 oz
Fiordilatte or low-moisture mozzarella	300 g	10.5 oz
Parmigiano reggiano, grated	80 g	3 oz
Basil	a handful	a handful
Garlic	1 clove	1 clove
Olive oil	for frying	for frying

Tear the mozzarella and leave it in a sieve for an hour. Wet mozzarella is the second most common reason a parmigiana turns to soup.

Method

1. Slice the aubergines lengthways, about 5 mm or a quarter inch thick. Salt them in a colander, weigh them down, and leave them an hour. Pat them dry.
2. Make a plain tomato sauce: garlic in oil, tomatoes, salt, twenty minutes, basil at the end. It should be thick enough to hold its shape on a spoon.
3. Fry the aubergine slices in hot oil until golden on both sides. Drain them on paper.
4. Layer: a little sauce, aubergine, sauce, torn mozzarella, parmigiano, basil. Repeat, and finish with sauce and parmigiano rather than mozzarella, which otherwise burns.
5. Bake at 180C, 350F, for 35 to 40 minutes, until the edges bubble and the top browns.
6. Let it stand for at least half an hour. It is better warm than hot, and better still the next day.

What goes wrong

It floods. Water from unsalted aubergine, from wet mozzarella, or from a thin sauce. All three are fixable in advance and none is fixable afterwards.

The slices are greasy. The oil was not hot enough, so the aubergine drank it instead of searing. Test with a corner: it should sizzle at once.

It collapses when you serve it. Cut too soon. The standing time is not politeness, it is when the layers set.

Why it works

Aubergine is mostly water held in a spongy structure. Salting collapses that structure by osmosis, so the slices fry rather than steam and absorb far less oil. The same salting concentrates what is left, which is why a salted parmigiana tastes of aubergine and an unsalted one tastes of frying.

At the table

It travels across the menu depending on where you are. In the south it is often a secondo and occasionally a whole meal; further north it turns up as a contorno beside meat, and it is entirely normal as an antipasto in a small portion.

It is better at room temperature than hot, and better still the next day. The layers settle, the tomato stops being separate from the aubergine, and it cuts cleanly instead of sliding apart. A tray made on Saturday is Sunday's lunch in a great many houses, and nobody considers that a compromise.

The name causes an argument that has never been settled. Parma claims it, Campania claims it, and the Sicilians point out that parmiciana is a word for the overlapping slats of a shutter, which is exactly what the aubergine looks like in the dish. Nobody wins.

Bread goes with it and is used properly here, because unlike a pasta sauce this one leaves something behind on the plate worth collecting.

No pasta is served with it. It is not a side for spaghetti.

What an Italian would say

That it is a dish in its own right and not a side for meat. That flour and egg on the slices is the Sicilian way and plain frying the Neapolitan one, and that whichever you were raised on is the correct one. And that eating it straight from the oven wastes it.