Why does it work?
- Salting the eggplant removes the water, ensuring a silky lasagna that is not soggy.
- Wiping fresh mozzarella and fried eggplant well with towels removes more excess moisture.
- A simple tomato sauce provides the perfect fresh fruit flavor for lasagna.
There’s a short period every year when most of the best summer produce overlaps with much of what’s to come in fall and winter. There are piles of red tomatoes alongside piles of fresh, crunchy apples and hearty winter squash mixed with bell peppers and eggplant. I don’t want to ever have to pick a favorite time of year — they all have their place — but if I had to, it would be hard not to pick this short but exuberant season as one of my highlights. Most glorious.
This is also the time of year when temperatures drop and cravings for more comforting, filling foods increase. At this moment, I can’t think of a better dish to make than lasagna alla norma, which is an al forno (“baked”) spin on… The famous Sicilian pasta It features summer stars like eggplant and tomatoes along with fresh dairy products like ricotta or mozzarella (some recipes for this lasagna use one, some others, and I use both). It’s the perfect way to make use of the last of summer’s produce in a fall-appropriate way.
Although this recipe is commonly known as lasagna alla Norma (or lasagna alla Catanese, after the city of Catania where alla Norma is said to have originated), I find it helpful to think of it as a cross between eggplant parmigiana and lasagna, given its alternating layers. Of fried eggplant, tomato sauce, cheese and pasta. On a technical level, the parmigiana mindset is most useful in determining the best way to prepare the dish.
When I was working on my recipe for years ago Italian style eggplant parmesan (melanzane alla Parmigiana), I made it the way I learned many years ago while working on farms in Italy: I sliced fresh summer eggplant, fried them in oil, then topped with fresh mozzarella and a simple layer of eggplant. Fresh tomato sauce. It’s my favorite way to prepare it, much more so than the baked Italian-American version—and the result is silky and fragrant, not heavy on bread.
But over time, some comments on the recipe appeared complaining about a watery result. This astonished me, as it had never happened to me before, neither on the farm, nor at my home in New York. Eventually I saw enough comments like that that I revisited my recipe and also had it tested by one of my colleagues in the test kitchen (she reported great results). In the end, I updated the recipe a bit with a few small technical tweaks to help reduce potential wetness, all of which I apply to this recipe as well. they:
- Eggplant salt. My lifelong experience is that most in-season eggplants do not need salting. It’s not bitter, which is often given as a reason for salting, and I have no problem with how it cooks when unsalted. But even briefly salting draws out some of the eggplant’s water, and if wetness is an issue for some home cooks, it seemed like a logical step to add to my parmigiana recipe, and to this one. Think of it as an insurance policy against unwanted wetness.
- – Drain well after frying. This was a step in my original parm recipe, but I rewrote the instructions to emphasize how important it is to dry the fried eggplant slices well to remove excess oil. Oil is not water, of course, but its abundance could theoretically give the impression that the dish is too wet.
- Avoid thin tomato sauce. This was also not so much a technical change to my recipe as it was a reworking of what was already there, more clearly emphasizing the importance of using a sauce that isn’t too thin and watery. It doesn’t have to be as thick as tomato paste by any means, but you want a sauce that, although fresh, bright and fruity, is also thick with the natural fibers of the fruit, much like a good applesauce.
- Banana smudge. I much prefer real fresh mozzarella to the low-moisture stuff, though, as it’s not great at melting and can release water when it melts. It has a clean, milky flavor that comes through in the finished dish and improves it greatly, making it much better than any of the low-moisture mozzarellas typically recommended in this type of recipe. So, what to do about that water? Simple: All you have to do is grab a clean kitchen towel and wipe the cheese well to absorb excess water. This seems to be the solution.
With all the modifications above, I’m confident that my melanzane alla parmigiana recipe won’t be too greasy for anyone, and I can say the same for this lasagna, which uses the same techniques, just with some pasta layers thrown in for good measure.
The result is gorgeous, with flavors and textures that feel both summer and fall at the same time. For all my talk of seasons, I’ll be honest: I’ll happily eat this any time of year.