That was me asking a grocery store employee. She kindly corrected me and said “You mean Japanese Eggplant?”. I use the word “kindly” very loosely. The recipe called for Skinny Eggplant, maybe it was trying to be politically correct.

At any rate, she directed me to this wonderful pale purple vegetable. It looked exactly like what I asked for, I don’t know why the employee corrected me. She obviously knew what I was talking about. I digress.

I made Panko and Parmesean Cheese Breaded Japanese Eggplant on top of an Artichoke and Ham salad with Poppyseed dressing. Say that three times fast.

The worst part of making this amazing meal was having to dip all of the eggplant medallions into egg and then into breading then into the pan of olive oil. Very tedious and quite scary (I hate cooking with oil). Let the oil heat up but don’t let it over heat, dip the eggplant and put it in the pan but don’t let it burn, only a certain amount of medallions fit in the pan, they’re starting to burn, flip them over, ok dip some more medallions in egg and breading, move the cooked eggplant out of the pan, put more eggplant in the pan. It was like an assembly line. A very messy assembly line.

Lesson Learned: Timing is everything.

Positive Lesson Learned: I bet I could make a mean eggplant parmesan with marinara sauce.