When July and August comes around and the eggplant in our garden starts growing like crazy, we love making one of our favorite Southern Italian dishes where eggplants are the star. You have probably heard of this dish called several names like eggplant lasagna or eggplant parmesan. In Italy this dish is called parmigiana di melanzane.
Parmigiana is prevalent in most of Southern Italy and you can find from Naples all the way down to Sicily. There are also many ways to make this dish. Some people like to go HAM and fry the eggplant in egg batter and flour as well as add slices of cooked ham or mortadella in between each layer.
We wanted to add a seafood twist to this dish and when we saw swordfish steaks on sale at Albertsons here in Idaho, we immediately bought them. Originally we wanted to make swordfish steaks but then we browsed down the fruit and vegetable aisle and saw these beautiful eggplants and immediately we came up with the parmigiana.
For this recipe, we used Mutti Tomato Puree
With this recipe, it is easy to rush and try to eat it as soon as it comes out of the oven. However we recommend that you wait at least 1 hour before trying to slice it open so it can solidify.
Let us know what you think of the recipe and please rate it!
Layered Eggplant Swordfish Parmigiana/Lasagna
Course: Seafood Dishes, Side DishesCuisine: ItalianDifficulty: Medium6
servings2
hours1
hour15
minutes500
kcal1
minute3
hours15
minutesA seafood spin on a classic Italian dish. This parmigiana features all the delicious ingredients of a normal parmigiana such as mozzarella, tomato puree, basil and parmigiano reggiano but with a delicious swordfish twist.
Ingredients
4 whole eggplants
8 oz of fresh mozzarella cheese, diced.
10-15 fresh basil leaves
1/2 onion, diced
24 oz of tomato puree
Kosher salt
Vegetable Oil
5 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil
1/2 lb of swordfish
Directions
- Eggplant preparation:
- Wash the eggplants and remove the stems.
- Slice the eggplant vertically into long, thin pieces.
- Once all the eggplant is sliced, prepare a large straining bowl.
- Add a few slices of eggplant and then lightly salt with Kosher salt.
- Repeat this until all the eggplant slices are in the bowl.
- Place a normal bowl under the straining bowl and then place a heavy weight on top of the eggplant to press out the excess water.
- Let the eggplant sit under the weight for 2 hours to strain out the excess water
- Once to hours have passed, remove the weight and brush of the salt from the eggplant. Individually squeeze each slice to squeeze out any excess water that remained.
- Sauce Preparation:
- In a large pot, add the olive oil and onions and cook the onions for about 3 minutes on a medium-high heat.
- Chop the swordfish into small pieces and add to the pot.
- Cook the swordfish for 2 minutes and then add the tomato puree and basil leaves.
- Stir well and cook the sauce on a low temperature for about 30 minutes.
- Bringing it all together:
- Preheat an oven to 400F.
- In a frying pan, heat up enough vegetable oil to immerse a few slices of the eggplant slices.
- Fry the eggplant slices for about 2 minutes on each side and place them on a plate with a paper towel to absorb the excess oil.
- In a large ceramic or glass baking pan, add some of the sauce and spread evenly all over the bottom of the baking pan.
- Place the eggplant slices in a neat, linear way. Try to cover all the gaps.
- Add another ladle of sauce on top and spread evenly.
- Grate some parmigiano reggiano cheese on top and add a few cubes of the mozzarella cheese.
- For the second layer, place the eggplant slices in the opposite direction of the first layer and repeat steps 6 and 7.
- Repeat this until you have used all of the eggplant slices.
- Place the pan in the oven and bake for 45 minutes.
- Once the parmigiana is done cooking, take it out of the oven and let it rest for about an hour before eating. Buon Appetito!
