Redemption in the Kitchen!

Before I get all gushy over my wonderful and non-disaster-like kitchen sucess last night I HAVE to say a big thank you to those who commented on the Mushroom/Spaztle incident yesterday...thank you for your lovely words and encouragement...funny how Blogland works eh?

Tuesday morning we woke up to a completely green lawn and no ice to be seen on the street..."what a great day this is going to be" I thought to myself as I managed to complete my morning walk without slip sliding my way through the park.  And...you know what? It turned out to be a pretty good day of wedding preparations, a bit of cleaning the house...and the slightly labourious production of a comforting and satisfying Eggplant Parmesean for supper.

Last week I was totally drooling over Annalisa from Cooking Easy's Melanzane Alla Parmigiana White, and although Eggplants aren't exactly in season here in England the thought of soft, squishy and tomatoey eggplant parmesean for last night's dinner was just the ticket to redeem myself in the kitchen!

On the one or two previous occasions when I have made Eggplant Parmesean I just sort of winged it...I mean...it is basically layers of eggplant and tomato sauce with mozzerella cheese and loads of parmesean.  Yesterday, however, I thought that I would use the recipe in my go-to vegetarian book at the moment (I am thinking about buying it)...In this recipe you slice the eggplant thinly and then layer it with some salt in a colendar to extract the bitterness and ultimately letting the fluffy inners of the eggplant absorb some flavour...once that is done and all the pieces have been dried, they are dredged in flour and then fried until golden....then cooled....and then, after the sauce is made it is all assembled and baked....

Not really THAT difficult, but slightly time consuming...anyway, while I was slicing the eggplant and salting it I was listened to a call-in show on the radio.  The topic was packed lunches for children...having worked in a school here in the UK I was interested in listening...other than the obvious picky eater business what was really interesting was that a number of parents mentioned that because THEIR food interest was limited their children's likings were limited as well.

I am not going to get all psychological or whatever...BUT it made me think about growing up and my own food likes and dislikes...any adult who knew me when I was growing up will know that there weren't very many dislikes when it came to food...

The funny thing was, as I was slicing up the eggplant, I realised that eggplant is something that I have only really started eating over the past 8 or so years.  I remember when I was younger that my mum HATED eggplant...and so....it was something that I wasn't exposed to...although I was exposed to lots of other things....Anyway, my mum has mellowed a bit in her attitutude towards eggplant and while I am not entirely sure when I started to like it...I know now that I love it.

When David came home from work and said "Dinner smells awesome" I was so happy....and then I thought...OH MY GOD! I DON'T EVEN KNOW IF HE LIKES EGGPLANT! hahahaha I can't remember him ever ordering anything with eggplant in it and I have never made any dish with eggplant for him.....

You know what? He gobbled it all up! To be honest, it was so yummy and perfect that even if he hadn't liked it that wouldn't have changed how happy I was with my sucess in the kitchen! The moral of the story? Stick with what you know....Italian cooking is in my blood...