Pork parmigiana

Anything parmigiana

Parmigiana or parm, as adopted and renamed in America, is a dish composed of tomato sauce, cheese and the key/name ingredient fried in breadcrumbs and buried beneath.

The key ingredient, a bit like a lead singer in a band, may vary (unless (s)he’s a bully who writes all the songs). Aubergine is the best known key ingredient making what is known as melanzane parmigiana, aubergine alla parmigiana or eggplant parm.

Is it Parmigiana or parmigiana?

Digression: you can often spot the recipe name spelt with upper case 'p': chicken or eggplant Parm or even Parmesan. Although it seems to make sense if you think the dish name is derived from Parmesan cheese, it's not although Parmesan is an ingredient.

The Italians treat ‘parmigiana’ as a common noun because an Italian parmigiana is a dish with components arranged like ‘palmigiana’ - window shutters slats. Not Parma. Not Parmesan. I do like that explanation: ‘gotcha! not what you thought!’

What else parmigiana?

Another frequent main ingredient is chicken (chicken parmesan, chicken parm) whose leftovers invariably going into sandwiches. Or, as it is the case in Italian sandwich shops - the whole dish made as a sandwich filling.

I believe veal escalopes are also used occasionally as parmigiana material, but more common and more accessible is pork tenderloin. It works in the dish extremely well.

Any reservations you might have I'm prepared to blow away: pork will be tough? Meltingly tender if you mallet it into behaving. Breadcrumbs will be soggy and/or disintegrate? You won't even notice what the breadcrumbs are like - the dish tastes so lovely.

An added aubergine layer adds a bit of work to the dish but it adds a lot of value and makes it lighter.

Elements of pork parmigiana

I make my own tomato sauce using a dumbass-simple method: by cooking down a tin of chopped tomatoes with some seasoning and a basil leaf. There is a proper tomato sauce recipe here but for the purpose of a parmigiana, the no-recipe above is sufficient. Otherwise use a jar of good simple pasta or pizza sauce.

The pork needs to be flattened thin, coated in flour, egg and breadcrumbs and fried crisp. And if you get really tired and fed up at that point, you still have dinner of pork schnitzels.

The aubergine slices need frying but you can roast or grill them in the oven to avoid fuss - just make sure you don't burn them to crisps which is surprisingly easy to happen.

And the final stage is building the parmigiana which is always the best bit when making pasta bakes, casseroles and gratins. Sauce - Parmesan - pork - mozzarella - repeat - bake.

And enjoy.