My Dark Days Challenge meal #8 is like eggplant parm. I say like because I make eggplant parm differently. Usually, I slice the eggplant, dip the rounds in an egg wash, then fry them. Then I layer tomato sauce, fried eggplant rounds, and mozzarella cheese. I sprinkle a little Parmesan, and then repeat until I run out of ingredients or room in the Corningware.

This, being a challenge meal, was made with with what I had on hand, what I could obtain, and what I could make from that.

The first difference is that the eggplant is roasted instead of fried. I roasted most of the eggplant I put by over the summer. At the time, I couldn’t get into pan-frying mounds of rounds. I did one small batch and was done. So the remainder of my eggplant stash got roasted in the oven. I figured I’d be eating baba ghanoush all winter.

The second difference is due to the great Connecticut mozzarella void. Doesn’t anyone in this state make fresh mozzarella from local milk? Not that I’ve found. Sure, there are folks making fresh mozz, but not from any animals that anyone knows. So, I made a batch of ricotta.

I did my best to layer the ingredients…

Food sources:

• pureed San Marzano tomatoes from Sport Hill Farm (from the freezer from this day, along with some Sport Hill garlic.
• ricotta from Stone Wall Dairy raw milk
• roasted eggplant from Joel at Cherry Grove Farm

It tasted A LOT like my usual eggplant parm, just visually diffferent. I’m hoping it was less fattening since it wasn’t fried.