Dollar Store Delights

This is Shorty coming at you again.  So this morning on my way to work, I stopped by the 99 Cents Only store to pick up a few things for work like dish soap and sponges, and noticed they had huge, beautiful eggplants in the produce section - 2 for a dollar!!!  I've never been a big fan of eggplant, and I've NEVER cooked it at home, but how do you pass up that deal?!

I searched online for a recipe idea, trying to avoid the obvious Eggplant Parmesean, but in the end, that's whaat I decided to go with.  I figured..."eggplant parm should be easy enough to whip up!"  Let me warn you know...that is NOT a dish you can just "whip up"...  While delicious, we didn't end up eating until 9:45pm last night.

Regardless...as this is a random post, and not part of the blogging game we're playing, I'm going to try and make it short and sweet:

I began the dish with the sauce.  Saute some...er, lots...of chopped garlic in a sauce pan with some olive oil, then throw in about a cup of chopped black olives, and a few spoonfulls of capers.  Sounds good already!  Then I added 2 large cans of crushed tomatoes, and some basil, salt, and pepper.  I should have used fresh basil, but I had dried on hand, so it worked just fine.  While that simmers, mix up a tub of ricotta with about a cup of parmesean cheese; set aside.  After the sauce has simmered for 10 minutes set it aside, the comes the hard (or at least tedious) part...

Once the eggplant was all sliced, I set up my batter stations: flour, egg wash, and seasoned breadcrumbs (all enhanced with salt and pepper, of course).

Fry the eggplant in about an 1/8 inch of oil (I used a combination of olive oil and canola oil) until golden brown on both sides.  Remove and drain on paper towels.  Once all of the eggplant is done, you finally get to build the dish!

Alternate between sauce, eggplant, ricotta mixture, and mozerella until you've used everything, making sure to top it off with the mozerella, and even more parmesean.  Now...bake at 350 for around an hour.  Once golden brown on top, remove from heat and let sit for about 20 minutes before slicing.

Looks good, doesn't it?

Tastes even better!  

OMG!  I'll definately be making this again, and I can't wait to eat these leftovers...  I hope it reheats well!