Never Fry Your Eggplant Again - Try These Old ITALIAN Tricks

THE 10 SECRETS 10. Heavy, shining, young. There are no male and female eggplants, whatever the market tells you. There are young ones and old ones. 9. Score a deep grid, never through the skin. Every cut is a door, and heat, salt and oil walk straight through it. 8. Salt it, and wait thirty minutes. An eggplant is a sponge, and a collapsed sponge has less room for oil. 7. A brush, not a bottle. About a tablespoon a half, worked into the cuts, so no corner drinks the lot. 6. Keep the wall, keep the flesh. A wall as thick as your finger, and the scooped flesh goes back in. 5. Cook the filling dry, in a pan, first. In a pan the water leaves as steam. In a boat it sinks. 4. Dry mozzarella, added late. Drain it, press it, and give it only the last five minutes. 3. Toasted crumbs on top. The cheese of the poor, from kitchens that had no cheese. 2. Rest it ten minutes, then dress it. Raw oil and torn basil, once the oven is done with it. 1. The thing his mother did first, that made a boy think she had forgotten the filling. It is not an ingredient. It is the order.