Hanukkah starts this Sunday at sundown, so are you ready? Over the past couple of weeks we have talked about deep fried sweets that you can prepare for Hanukkah, but if you have a more savory palette then this week’s blog is for you. Today I’d like to talk about one of my favorite recipes, fried eggplant.
Fried Eggplant
Ingredients
2 medium eggplants
2 eggs
Olive olive for frying
Italian bread crumbs
Salt
Paper towels
Directions
1. Wash, peel and slice your eggplants into ¼ inches slices. Lay the slices on a pile of paper towels and sprinkle with salt. Allow the pieces to sit for a few minutes. This will draw out the bitterness of the eggplant and help sweat out some of the moisture.
2. Pat the slices with the paper towels to remove extra salt and moisture.
3. Crack two eggs in a bowl and beat. Place bread crumbs in another container.
4. Heat about 2 tbsp of olive oil in a frying pan until it shimmers.
5. Use a pair of tongs to pick up a slice of eggplant, dip it in the egg wash and then dredge through the bread crumbs. Then set in the oil. Repeat with the other pieces. Don’t overload the frying pan, you will need to fry your eggplant in batches. Each side will take one or two minutes, then flip and fry the other side. Add oil as needed.
This is one of many great parve Jewish recipes that you can make for Hanukkah.
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Last week we started a series on fried foods that are good to serve for Hanukkah, which will begin this year at sundown on the 21st. Last week’s traditional Jewish recipes were for rosette cookies. This week I’d like to talk about how you can use the batter for rosettes to make other fried desserts for Hanukkah or for a special treat.
If you make your rosette batter a little thicker than the recipe calls for, by adding a little extra flour, then you can use it to coat a wide variety of dessert foods and then fry them. One of my favorite deserts to batter and deep fry is the Oreo® cookie. Any sandwhich cookie will actually work well, however, I love chocolate.
Candy bars also can be dipped in the batter and deep fried. I’ve heard that Snickers® bars are tasty deep fried, as are Three Muskateers. To make the frying process less messy you need to freeze the candy bars before you try to batter and fry them. This serves two purposes. First the frozen candy bar will absorb less of the oil and secondly it will prevent the candy bar from melting all over the place.
The final item that you can dip in batter and deep fry is cake. Pound cake in particular works well for deep frying. To prep the cake you will want to slice it in thick slices at least a half inch thick. Again freeze the cake for at least a half hour before you try to dip it in batter and deep fry it.
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