Joe Yonan

First things first, says Lidia Bastianich. Before I can even get the first question out of my mouth when I call her to talk about one of my favorite Italian dishes, she wants to make sure I know something very important. “Rollatini is not an Italian word,” she says.

No, it’s not. In Italy, eggplant rollatini - the dish I’m interviewing her about - is known as involtini di melanzane, right alongside all the other involtini: di pollo, di carne, di vitello, di pesce, to mean little bundles of chicken, meat, veal or fish, “anything you roll,” she says. “Rollatini is an Italian American invention.”

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Bastianich, a longtime television cooking show star, cookbook author and restaurateur, has always celebrated the glories of Italian American cuisine, often dishes that immigrants adapted to use local ingredients. In the case of eggplant rollatini, though, the name is the only thing that changed. Italians, especially south of Rome, have historically depended on eggplant as an alternative to animal proteins out of a need for economy, making it a staple of Italy’s cucina povera.

“I think eggplant became so beloved originally because when there was no meat, it kind of acted like meat,” she says. “In the north, we used cabbage for the same purpose.”

In fact, she never tasted involtini di melanzane until she opened her first restaurant in 1971 in Queens, with an Italian American cook, and they put it on the menu. “It’s a favorite,” she says.

If you’re not already acquainted, what makes the dish so special is the simple interplay of soft eggplant, creamy ricotta and a slightly sweet marinara sauce - store-bought or homemade. It has all the beauty of eggplant parmesan but with its own unique appeal. Most of the cheese is in the filling, not on top of the dish, so rather than a gooey melted mozzarella blanket over and in between layers of fried eggplant that you cut like a lasagna (I’m not complaining), you get discreet parmesan-dusted eggplant bundles with a milky filling oozing out into the marinara - and onto the plate. What’s not to love?

Bastianich’s tips include picking a firm, fresh eggplant, cutting it in thick slices, dredging them in flour and panfrying before draining, cooling, rolling, nestling in the sauce and baking until bubbly. Thankfully, before I could confess to her my own shortcut adaptations to her recipe, she volunteers: “There’s also the method of grilling the eggplant slices - or of baking them,” both popular with modern cooks interested in lighter dishes.

However you cook the eggplant initially, she says, “You don’t have to worry about whether it’s fully cooked or not, because you’re going to bake it again.” In other words, there’s virtually no chance the eggplant will end up with that unpleasant spongy texture that has unfortunately turned way too many people off.

As Bastianich says, this is the time to go for the best ricotta you can find: whole milk and as fresh as possible. Of course, you can make your own. Bastianich says she would often bake rollatini for her mother, Grandma Erminia, who remembered the childhood joys of ricotta made fresh from her family’s goats. Or, if you’re vegan, you can use one of my other adaptations: a filling built on artichoke hearts, cashews and seasonings, the same one I use for Baked Stuffed Shells.

No matter how you adapt it - and whatever you decide to call it - eggplant rollatini delivers a pan of pure, Italian-style comfort.

#vegetarian

When you’ve got eggplant, ricotta and marinara, just roll with it