I was thinking about a side for the melanzana and fancied lentils. I love lentils, used to hate them as a child but think they’re king now. Puy lentils are my favourite and really easy to make (no soaking required) really easy to add your own bent too.
I fried a large onion in rapeseed oil (has a nice nutty flavour and supposed to be good for you…..) added two cloves of chopped garlic and fried some more. I then added about two cups of puy lentils and a generous squirt of tomato puree and some black pepper. I then covered this mixture with boiling water and added a tin of chopped tomatoes. I simmered for a couple of mins then added about half a jar of Patak’s tikka masala spice paste sauce…..cheating I know. I added two sticks of chopped up celery and a large handful of green beans. Splashed in some soy sauce, added some fresh corriander and left to simmer away. I use soy sauce instead of salt in a lot of dishes, I don’t know why but I do.

The smell is lovely, in truth a salad would probably work better as this is more of a main course but we live and learn….or some of us do.

Okay, I googled the difference between Melanzana and Parmagiana, I’ve been making this dish for years and just called it either of these names…..Eleanor was the person who introduced this dish to me, thanks Eleanor, I’ve made it so many times now!

So I sliced up a large aubergine into thin slices which I then fried in some olive oil and 4 cloves of garlic. It was quite a lot of aubergine so didn’t spend too long frying as I was impatient. I then added a layer of the fried aubergine to the bottom of a casserole dish (the one I used today isn’t my first choice). I then removed the rest of the fried aubergine and put to one side, sliced up a large onion and fried it in the pan with olive oil. I then added black pepper to the onions and some vegetable stock cube. I then took some of the onion and placed it on the aubergine in the dish, I then added some tomato chilli sauce and some soy sauce to the onions and aubergine. I next sliced up a courgette and added that on top of the mixture, added another dash of soy and then added some sliced mozzarella. I then added another layer of aubergine, onions, chilli sauce, black pepper, some tomato passata and some veg stock cube (I have a thing about Oxo veg stock cubes). On goes another layer of mozzarella, more aubergine, onion, a bit more tomato passata, some tabasco, the last bit of mozzarella and then a covering of grated parmesan cheese. A sprinkling of black pepper and the basil leave and quartered cherry tomatoes for the top. 

 I then put it in the oven at 180 C for about 15 mins then covered it and turned down to about 120 C and left for an hour, not sure why, just did. It looks like this now………

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The black bits on top are just the skin of the aubergine so it’s not burnt, smells lovely but there could be too much liquid……sure some brown bread to mop it up will do the trick!

I’ve always enjoyed cooking from a fairly early age. I’m not particularly brilliant at it but presenting a plate of food to someone is something that I get a huge amount of pleasure from (if it’s good). Speaking to Pod as I was putting the finishing touches to a parmagiana he said that I should write a blog, or I said to him that I should write a blog, so I took a picture of the parmagiana, put it in the oven then started the blog.

I’ve decided I’m just going to write about as many meals as I can and see where it goes. I’ll include other bits of random information but I’m not prescribing to any blog methodology, I’m just going freestyle as Pete would have it. I always seem to be concerned about what other people think but I’m going to shelve that as much as I can, people judge, they always do (that’s for you Nick).

I’m going to kick off with the Parmagiana (or is it melanzana?)

I’d never been to Germany before so was very curious about what to expect from a trip to Hamburg. I went on a stag do and was pleasantly surprised by what a cool city it is. Food wise it was fairly insane but that partly because we hit the tourist areas and ate tourist based food. Will upload some photos but this trip was pre blog so no real focus. Pig knuckle and currywursts stick in the mind as do, of course, the steins of beer. Best wishes to the fab Pod and Em, am looking forward to the big day.

The one thing that will always live with me is tucking into the below ‘pig’s knuckle’ in a traditional German restaurant – it’s a awful lot of meat!