Week 49 - Modernist

Back in 2014, the first year I (unofficially) did the 52 week cooking challenge, one of the themes came up as molecular. It was one of the few challenges that year that I skipped (more here), since I didn't want to buy any new ingredients or equipment that I was probably not going to use again, and I also just couldn't find anything I wanted to make. Fast-forward to 2022, and my philosophy about it hasn't really changed, but now I actually had to do the modernist challenge if I wanted to complete the challenge for the year. What was I going to make?! Thankfully, someone linked recipes from the Modernist Cuisine site/cookbook, and there were a couple there that piqued my interest.

One thing I hadn't realized until scrolling through those recipes was that food made in microwave could also fall under the umbrella of modernist cooking. That made a huge difference in getting this challenge done! We've made fish before in the microwave, so I didn't want to do that again, but I was very intrigued by their recipe for a microwaved eggplant parmesan. 

The ingredients for this challenge were:

- eggplant, about 1 lb

- olive oil

- garlic marinara sauce

- ricotta cheese

- mozzarella cheese rounds

- 1/2 cup torn basil leaves

- grated parmigiano reggiano

- panko breadcrumbs

We ate some tomato parmesan focaccia from Trader Joe's on the side (was hoping for more olive fugasse but they had none). I intended to price this out, since I was curious about how much these challenge meals were adding up to considering the increased price of groceries, but it's been over three months now, and that's just too much work to figure out.

I was actually impressed by how this turned out and how simple it was to make in the microwave. The first steps of microwaving the eggplant were easy, and it really did end up with very tender slices. The only issue with our eggplant was that it wasn't "strong" enough to hold the rest of the ingredients in the stack, but I had to use baby eggplant because all the larger eggplant at two different stores that day looked terrible. So instead of one large circle wherever eggplant was required, I had two or three smaller pieces instead. Still turned out okay!

As far as flavor, we thought it reminded us a little more of lasagna than eggplant parmesan, but that could be because the ricotta was a pretty dominant flavor and the eggplant got a little bit lost since the pieces were so small. Either way, it was delicious. Would I make it again? Not sure. It was pretty simple to make, and it did taste good, but I haven't made eggplant parmesan the "regular" way, so I don't know yet which way we like better.