Ingredients

Serves four people.

For the sauce:

• 1.5 kg of tinned, diced tomatoes
• 5 onions
• 100g of sundried tomatoes
• 100g of dried artichokes
• 6 cloves of garlic
• 1 tsp of fennel seeds
• some capers
• some red wine

Not for the sauce:

• 5 eggplants
• 450 g of mozzarella
• 150g of Parmesan cheese
• 2 large bunches of basil

For the side salad:

• 500g of baby leaf spinach
• 100g of fairly soft sheep’s cheese
• 1 grapefruit
• 1 tbsp of honey
• 1 tsp of coarse mustard

Method

Cut the eggplants in slices of roughly half a centimeter. Put them in a bowl and lavishly salt them - the idea being water being drained from them. I would recommend letting them drain for at least half an hour. If you want to go the extra mile, you can pat them dry every now and then.

Dice the onions and start sauteing in olive oil on medium heat. Finely dice the garlic. Once the onions start becoming translucent, add the garlic. Once the garlic starts taking some color, add the fennel seeds. Once they are fragrant, add a dash of red wine as well some roughly chopped capers.

Roughly chop the sundried tomatoes and artichokes and add them to the mix. Let them sauté¹ for a moment and then add the tinned tomatoes. Make the mixture come to a boil once. After that, ideally try to cook it under low to medium heat for a longer while, thickening the mixture. Depending on the intensity of your tinned tomatoes you might want to add some tomato puree. Depending on how the process goes you might want to add some water every now and then. Season, all the while anticipating the Parmesan cheese and salt absorbed by the eggplants.

Once the eggplants have lost some water, start frying them. In order to do so, bring (at least) a pan with some frying oil (e.g. peanut oil) to medium heat. Make sure to make every slice of eggplant go through a bath of flour just before adding it to the pan. Also, make sure to make sure there are no excessive amounts of flour remaining on the eggplant slice - best lightly tap it before going into the pan. If you flour your eggplant ahead of time, it might become soggy.

Pat off the excess oil of every fried eggplant slice with kitchen paper.

Once all the eggplant slices are fried and the sauce is ready to go, get your oven ready at approximately 180 degrees Celsius.

Rinse and repeat the layering process in a large oven dish:

1. Slices of eggplant
2. Some thickened tomato sauce
3. A fair amount of torn mozzarella bits
4. Leaves of basil
5. Some grated Parmesan cheese

Add a slightly larger amount of Parmesan cheese on the top layer.

Cook until crusty and golden brown.

For the salad, fillet the grapefruit and mix the ingredients briefly before serving, ideally with some olive oil and seasoning.