Your version of Chicken Parmesan sounds terrific. As for our own version, we’re slightly horrified, too.

But as we’ve said, when neighborhood restaurants sprang up in the Little Italy communities, the majority of patrons weren’t Italians. The Italians in the neighborhood couldn’t understand why they should leave home and pay for something they could cook themselves.

So it was non-Italians who came for the ‘abbondanza,’ and the ‘side-order’ of pasta; these were but two of the elements that made the neighborhood restaurants so appealing.

As for tomato sauce, there’s a reason why the neighborhood restaurants became known as ‘red sauce joints!’

Cucina casalinga, home cooking, can be vastly different from the cuisine on the menus at Italian-American restaurants.

Best regards,
Skip

I make it just like my immigrant mother taught me to make eggplant parmesan, except I use much more parmesan than the dusting my mother used. The bread crumbs are from homemade bread, much of it saved from the board when I cut slices from a loaf. I don’t use flour, instead I use a combination of 2/3 bread crumbs to 1/3 cheese seasoned with white pepper. I also dip the breaded chicken twice into a milk and egg batter.

There is no saute in the pan, no sauce, no mozzarella topping – just a long, slow bake for wonderfully moist and lightly browned chicken breasts. I serve the chicken alone as the star, and our side dish is normally a seasonal salad.

I’ll admit I’m fascinated and slightly horrified by your description of parmesan chicken with lots of sauce topped with mozzarella. It sure is a long way from my mother’s simple and special seasonal eggplant dish.