This little gem combines my love of grilling with my endless search for new summer vegetarian entrees. Turns out that eggplant parmigiana, that staple of Italian cuisine, is a wonderful candidate for the grill, cooking up quickly and cleanly. And — bonus! — grilling this dish not only requires less oil than the traditional recipe, it ends up imparting a smokiness it could never claim before.
These days you can buy eggplants in any size, but for this recipe you want one of those big old-fashioned massive beauties. At the supermarket, make sure that your eggplant’s skin is smooth and its flesh is firm. That’s how you’ll know it’s fresh. An eggplant with bruised skin and soft flesh is an older eggplant, and probably bitter, too.
You want to cut the eggplant into sturdy rounds about 3/4 inch thick. This allows each slice to hold its shape during the cooking process. A thinner slice would buckle under the weight of the tomatoes and the crumbs. The slices also are salted, which deeply seasons the eggplant and eliminates excess water, amping up the taste. The slices are grilled over direct heat so they pick up some of that lovely char. Once the other ingredients are added, you finish the cooking using indirect heat.
Traditional eggplant parmigiana calls for tomato sauce, but here I went with fresh tomatoes to give the dish a fresher, more summery taste. Like the eggplant, the tomatoes are pre-salted to make them less watery and more deeply flavored.