Eggplant Parmigiana

The main ingredient of this dish may mislead to an idea that it is dietetic, but it's quite caloric as the eggplants are fried before cooking the dish. Though it's really delicious!!!
The name comes from the use of Parmigiano cheese in the recipe. Sometimes you can find varieties of Parmigiana, prepared with zucchini or other vegetables, but the original one is prepared with eggplants. 
  
INGREDIENTS: 
Servings: 4

800g (or so) eggplants
3-4 large slices of ham
250g Mozzarella cheese
100g Parmigiano cheese
500ml tomato purèe
1/2 onion
1/2 stalk of celery
1 carrot
salt
sugar
EVO oil  
 

1. Slice eggplants 1cm thin or a bit less, salt every slice and put them into a colander. Place a saucepan full of water on the eggplants in order to press them.
2. After half an hour remove the eggplant slices. They may become a bit darker in colour and moister as they release their juice. 
 
3. Fry the eggplants with the EVO oil and let them cool down. I usually use a non-stick pan to avoid having the eggplants too oily, I add just a bit of oil.

4. While the eggplants are cooling we'll cook a tomato sauce. This is a typical simple tomato sauce that you can use for pasta as well.
Chop onion and celery finely, grate carrot and cook it with some EVO oil till the mix becomes gold.

5. Add tomato purèe, couple of pinches of sugar and half a vegetable stock cube.  Dilute with some water (100ml or so).
6. Simmer the sauce till it becomes dense, try if it's salty enough. 

Note: Tomato sauce for this dish should be a bit drier. If it's too liquid, the dish will result in being watery as the dish also contains mozzarella cheese and this type of cheese has a lot of liquid in it.

7. Take mozzarella cheese out of it's whey and squeeze the remaining whey out. This prevents the dish from being too watery.
Note: As a hint, you can use mozzarella that is used for pizza, it's drier and is sold without whey. But PLEASE don't take GRATED mozzarella. If you use this Italian cheese, I'd like to let you know, that it doesn't exist grated in Italy!!!
8. So, cut mozzarella into small cubes. Grate Parmigiano cheese.  
  

9. Let's start joining the ingredients. In a ceramic or glass pan pour some EVO oil and some tomato sauce and place the fried eggplants as the first layer, then comes the sauce, ham slices ripped in pieces, after that add a handful of Mozzarella and sprinkle everything generously with grated Parmigiano.
 
 10. Repeat the layers, add more Parmigiano on top to have a nice crust.
 


This is how Parmigiana layers look like from the side.

11. Cook your Parmigiana in the oven at 200C for about 30 minutes.
   

Note: This is an original recipe but to enrich the recipe you can also add to the dish sautèed mushrooms and sliced eggs on each layer.