Sample Chapter:

The Pursuit of Chicken Parm

I decided at 3:30 one recent afternoon to make eggplant parmesan. I had just watched a documentary on Netflix called "What The Health?" and was convinced I could be dead by tomorrow if I ever ate meat again, so I was looking for meatless recipes.
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I should have looked up "easy eggplant parmesan," but that would have been too logical for my liking, so instead, I settled on a recipe from Bon Appetit. I don't know if you know this, but a recipe from Bon Appetit is code for "you'll spend $200 on rare ingredients and six days in the kitchen." Still, I didn't even look over the directions, believing I was a good enough cook to tackle anything.

I'm here to tell you that eggplant parmesan destroyed any notion that I was a good cook and that I could handle anything. I should have turned back when I realized I had to slice four pounds of eggplant and then carefully place the slices between six layers of paper towels so the darn things could dry out for an hour. That's how particular this purple vegetable is in this recipe. It's eggplant, people! It shouldn't require more attention than a day-old baby.

Instead of buying a jar of marinara, I was instructed to make my sauce with an entire head of crushed garlic and some red onions as a base. Okay, I can handle that, I thought, but the sauce needed to roast in the oven for two and a half hours, and it was looking more likely we'd be eating dinner for breakfast.

Bon Appetit should have a warning at the beginning of the recipe: "Do not, under any circumstances, begin this dish at 3:30 in the afternoon. This recipe will take everything you've got for the unforeseeable future." 

What killed me was having to dip a mountain of sliced eggplant into three bowls of coating—flour, egg, then breadcrumbs. Halfway through, my breadcrumbs got all gummy from the egg, so I had to abandon that part of the recipe. Instead, I sprinkled the eggplant slices with salt and pepper and roasted them in the oven.

By this time, my husband had come in from work, and he looked around and said, "What is going on in here?" There were eggplant slices on the floor, flour and egg spilled on the counter, and marinara stains all over my shirt. 

"I am in the middle of a war," I told him, "And I'm too far into enemy territory to turn back. So, get some take-out food, have a nice dinner on the porch, and I'll see you in the morning."

I had to fry the eggplant that made it through my breadcrumb factory in a large frying pan. Still, only eight slices would fit in the pan at a time, so that was an hour-long ordeal, and it occurred to me again how pampered this eggplant was. So far, I'd washed, sliced, salted, dried, and put it through an assembly line, and now I had to fry it in individual batches. 
I didn't care if I ever saw an eggplant again.

I had so many eggplant slices doing so many things—-roasting in the oven, frying in the pan, rolling along the floor, and drying in between paper towels; at one point, I realized I had no idea what I was doing. I was in the weeds, as they say, in the restaurant industry.

When I had transformed enough eggplant slices to make a few layers, I must admit they were a sorry-looking bunch. But I was at the point where I didn't care how the dish looked at the end; I just wanted out of my contract.

Thankfully, the recipe calls for mozzarella, and who doesn't love good cheese? I threw enough cheese in to make it taste better. 

At 9:00 at night, my husband and I sat down to a piece of eggplant parm, which wasn't horrible, although it could have been the cheese.

I want to thank all the Italian grandmas who have made this dish for generations of their families. I don't think the people who walk through your door and sit at your kitchen table have the slightest idea what you do to put it on the table. You are not appreciated enough, and we should all be ashamed.
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One piece of advice for anyone setting off on this journey: approach this task with bravery and start two days ahead.