Eggplant! Eggplant!! Eggplant!!!

As a young girl living in Manhattan, I had a friend from "da Bronx".  We would go to Tucci's (in the Bronx)  on Friday evenings after work.  It was there, for the first time, I had Eggplant Parmesan.

Now I had had fried eggplant at home in Pennsylvania  many, many times.  My Mother served it as a side vegetable dish.  I always, always loved eggplant.

It's funny.....it seems you either love it or hate it.

But Tucci's!  They did wonderful things with the eggplant and I was in heaven.

Fast forward many years and it is still one of my very favorite dishes.  Most of my pals enjoy it
as well.

I recently prepared an Eggplant Rollatini with no ricotta cheese.  Yep, no ricotta cheese.  That is
almost sacriligious, is it not?

I also did not fry the eggplant in oil.

Instead, I sliced the eggplant lengthwise and placed it on a parchment-lined baking sheet I had
sprayed with Pam.  Then I placed the eggplant slices on the baking sheet and sprayed each
slice with Pam.  I also sprinkled just a small bit of kosher salt on each slice.

The pan went into a 400* oven for about 20 minutes.  (some of the slices were a bit too thin and
were over-baked but most were just right).

After the slices cooled, I placed a beautiful, thin slice of prosciutto on top of each slice of eggplant.
Then I added a rolled-up slice of Fontina cheese and rolled up the eggplant slice.

This was placed on a bed of Roma Tomato Sauce (another blog posting), topped with freshly grated parmesan cheese, and baked for about 25 minutes. (Mozzarella cheese is another good option).

Heaven!!!!