Cooking With Clara: Eggplant Parmesan

94 year old great-grandmother Clara has been videotaped by her grandson as she prepares meals that she and her family ate during the Great Depression. In an attempt to capture not only the recipes and the methods of preparation but Clara’s stories and memories of the time, she and her grandson have created quite an archive of precious videos!

I’ve previously written about several, including Sicilian Fig Cookies parts one and two, Depression breakfast, dandelion salad, pasta with peas, and poorman’s meal.

In the video above, Clara prepares Eggplant Parmesan, though she says right off the bat that she actually makes it with Romano cheese instead of Parmesan, but that it still tastes the same! She recounts how eggplant was cheap and easy to prepare, but that even if something cost a little more it just meant they had less of it.

She begins by cutting the eggplant into slices about 1/4″ to 1/2″ slices before shallow frying them in some oil in a pan until they turn crispy and brown. When the eggplant is done frying, drain them on paper towels to get rid of the excess cooking oil.

She then puts some homemade sauce over each slice of eggplant and sprinkles with some Romano (or Parmesan!) cheese. She recommends letting them sit for just a bit to cool down enough to eat. Since her family grew the eggplant themselves and served it with dandelion salad, she says the meal was virtually free. I love easy recipes like this that don’t require any kind of recipe, and this would be great with a slice of crusty bread on the side, too!