The Cutting Board

As Clare diligently (haha “diligently”)  pans out those transfer college essays for the success of the rest of her life, I’m cooking eggplant! Oh, eggplant, thou purple plant that supposedly resembles an egg but really, who’s ever heard of a purple egg besides those fake kind that appear ’round Easter time—LIES, s’all I can say…

eggplant coated in beaten egg with pepper flakes, then fried with a slice of fontinella cheese.

Anyway, for an impromptu brunch, I rummaged through the fridge and discovered half an eggplant. Now, I’d fried eggplant in egg before, resulting in only sheer goodness. But today, I remembered that I’d bought pepper flakes, just ’cause I did sense something lacking in my first experiment with fried eggplant. So this time, I included the pepper flakes: beat an egg, sprinkled pepper flakes, salt&pepper, dunked slices of eggplant, then fried ‘em in olive oil.

just to get all that savoriness at the same temperature.

But then a thing occurred to me. That thing being the vodka sauce I tried for the first time the night before. So I then decided to smother the freshly fried eggplant in vodka sauce.

fried eggplant in vodka sauce.

At this point, my taste buds proceeded to roll around in my mouth in happy giddiness from all that happy deliciousness.

Savor this: creamy, tangy vodka sauce, salty sweet fontinella cheese, the hearty eggplant texture with its distinctly soft and subtle taste, while slight kicks from the pepper flakes.

Tags: eggplant, fontinella, fried, olive oil, pepper flakes, vodka sauce