When we left the farm they gave me a bag full of organic goodies, eggplant, eggs, tomatoes, vegetable oil, dried strawberries, and asparagus. I was challenged into making a meal and invite friends over.

I decided to make eggplant Parmigianino. What was I thinking off!

I made a tomato sauce with the tomatoes they gave me. I oven roasted them and then cooked them up fresh basil, onions and garlic.

While the sauce was cooking I sliced the eggplant and sprinkled them with salt to get rid of most of the water. After that I patted each slice dry and dredged it in flour, eggs and bread crumbs. I took great pains to light fry each slice. Since the breadcrumbs dirtied the oil I had to sift the oil several times. I drained the eggplant on a drying rack with paper towels underneath.
Not fun to clean up afterwards.

By that time the tomato sauce smelled very good. I grated the mozzarella cheese and the Asiago, which I substituted for the Parmesan cheese.

Time to assemble, a layer of sauce, eggplant, cheeses, fresh basil and then again three more times. Total time spent 3 hours.

I took the asparagus, cut off the ends and washed them, put it in the microwave for 4 minutes, removed it and added lemon juice, lemon zest and salt.

Brushed the baguette slices with melted olive oil, garlic and butter.

As most cooks do I began to worry if there would be enough food. I found some smoked salmon in the freezer. Cooked some angel hair pasta. Sautéed some onions and garlic in butter, added some vodka, then added some cream grated a bit of nutmeg into it, let it simmer for a while then added the pasta, sautéed everything together till all the noodles were coated with the sauce and added the smoked salmon stirred it for a few minutes and plated it up, garnished it with lemon zest, wished I had some caviar to top if off.

Of course there was more than enough food, after the past and garlic bread we had to take a long break as we were stuffed. Sipping on sangria we watched Batman. About nine o’clock we ate the eggplant Parmigianino and the asparagus.

We were so stuffed we did not even eat the dessert of caramelized bananas with chocolate lava sauce.