I’ve mentioned it before, but my sister spent 2 months living in Florence, Italy this past fall. While there, she took a really legit Italian cooking class, where she spent all day learning how to cook Italian food.

Naturally, I enlisted her help to make a Blogmas post out of it.

She’s unwilling to try GF pasta (because the texture wouldn’t be the same!) but she offered me something equally delicious: eggplant parmigiana. Apparently, the real Italian version of this dish isn’t breaded! I actually don’t generally like eggplant because it’s usually served so tough, but I had confidence that my sister would be able to transform it into something I would enjoy.

This dish is an all day affair. Legit Italian cooking takes forever. I actually spent the first part of the day at the library and when I got home, she had already been working for 2 hours.

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2 hours chopping. For the sauce, the vegetables need to be chopped into the tiniest, most adorable cubes, to properly break down when cooking.

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My contribution here was providing a fresh batch of eggnog. I almost didn’t screw it up this time but cooked it literally seconds too long. Blender to the rescue again.

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Once the vegetables are chopped finely, they go in the pot with quality olive oil, sage, bay leaves, oregano, salt, pepper, and other spices.

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And then they cook.

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While they were cooking, she started prepping the eggplant. The key is to cook the eggplant twice: once before it goes in with the sauce. She sliced it up and roasted it with some olive oil.

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Our little helper:

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Then, diced tomatoes were added to the sauce.

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After everything was thoroughly cooked (with necessary taste testing cooking on as well), it was time to assemble.

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It has Buffalo mozzarella and parmesan. Apparently Buffalo mozzarella is made with Buffalo milk! I actually didn’t know that! It’s a lot more flavorful.

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Beautiful, and ready to eat!

We served it with a salad and some quality red wine.

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We ate this fancy meal in the dining room (we normally eat in the kitchen), and I went to pull out my chair, but it felt surprisingly heavy.

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Well hey there Lilly.

This was absolutely delicious. The homemade sauce was out of this world, and the eggplant was perfectly tender. Apparently 2 months in Italy is worth something!

I think next up for her to make us is gelato though…