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!