The Chefs Line

It's Italian Week on The Chefs' Line. Whoo!

And we're tackling ultimate Italian comfort food -

eggplant parmigiana.

Heat, heat, heat! I'm on my game.

Parmigiana is all about simplicity and a few fresh ingredients -

eggplant, layered with cheese and rich tomato sauce.

Beautiful.

Some of Australia's best home cooks

will be putting their culinary skills to the test

against hatted Italian restaurant, Sotto Sopra.

And tonight the home cooks will face the first stop in The Chef's Line,

apprentice chef, Giorgia.

Perfect, show me?

As the week progresses... Beauty.

..the competition will escalate in difficulty,

from the apprentice all the way...

Mattia, get some ice now. Yes, Chef!

..to the head chef.

Judged by executive chef Dan Hong,

renowned chef Mark Olive

and food writer Melissa Leong.

Whose parmigiana will win them

the chance to reach the end of The Chefs' Line?

We are back!

The Chefs' Line kitchen is open once again.

Oh, yeah.

Buonasera, Restaurant Sotto Sopra!

Buonasera!

Executive Chef Alessandro, thanks for bringing your team.

Are they a well drilled unit? Totally.

Totally? Pretty confident.

I think they're a lot better than me.

Apprentice chef Giorgia, you are the first to step up.

And you have one of the toughest jobs because you are facing up

against four talented home cooks

and being watched by Executive Chef Alessandro.

No pressure. Fingers crossed!

Guys, I love your passion, I can already tell

that we're going to have a lot of fun in this kitchen this week.

Eggplant parmigiana is a Southern Italian dish.

And it's made from sliced fried eggplant,

layered with tomato sauce, cheese and baked to perfection.

And judging will be Dan!

Ooh!

And to be fair, we'll be sending him out back

so he doesn't know who's cooking what.

Ciao, everyone, and good luck!

Grazie! Ciao, bello.

Later!

Apprentice chef Giorgia, home cooks, you have 60 minutes

to give us your best delicious eggplant parmigiana,

so let's cook!

I'm really excited to show the way I'm cooking.

I'm confident that I can create a really rustic recipe

that is just going to be full of flavour.

Heat, heat, heat! There we go.

Eggplant parmigiana - what do you think?

So, eggplant, it's a tricky thing sometimes.

You can either overcook it and it goes soggy and oily,

or you can undercook it and it kind of feels a little bit spongy.

And that's not a very nice texture to eat.

Then you've got to have that thing that is going to marry it all together -

the cheese, the sauce has got to be nice and rich.

Totally!

You know, it's only a few ingredients so they need to come together beautifully.

Good luck, everyone, you're looking really good!

Thank you! Thank you.

I'm Paolo. I'm from Messina, Sicily.

Tonight, I'm making a parmigiana siciliana della nonna.

Which is typical parmigiana from my grandmother.

It's good because this type of dish brings me back to home

and reminds me of me working at home,

smell these beautiful flavours, it's passion!

Oh!

Buonasera! Yum!

This is for my beautiful and loving wife.

Buon appetito!

It's pretty close to my nonna's recipe

but I'm going to put a little bit of a twist -

I'm going to add some ham.

You have to put her love plus your love

and it's the best combination, you can do it.

Paolo, you doing the traditional one?

Yeah, yeah, I'm doing the traditional one...

No flour in the eggplant?

No flour in the eggplant.

I think that when you put it in the oven,

it might make the eggplant a little bit soggy, but that's my opinion.

Looking good!

Thank you.

I'm Ivano. I'm from Hobart, in Tasmania.

That's great.

I'm cooking an eggplant parmigiana with a sourdough and walnut crumb.

That's the plan.

As my mother would say, Italian cooking is in my blood.

Just some herbs.

Here we go! Hey!

Cheers!

Hello, Ivano! Hi!

How are you? Yeah, good.

Green, white and red.

We need those colours, don't we? Obviously.

And I love the green.

Well, I dressed for the part today, didn't I?

You have just under 40 minutes, by the way. OK. Thank you, Melissa.

Bye. Cheers.

My name is Nadia. I'm from Melbourne.

My love of Italian cooking comes from my connection to my family.

Gotcha!

I'm making eggplant parmigiana with cashew cheese.

It's a little bit different.

I'm veganising it so hopefully the judge doesn't know

that it's actually vegan!

17 years ago I first went vegan,

and I will go to the ends of the earth

to actually recreate the foods that I love.

Hi!

Some lovely al dente spaghetti

in this beautiful, simple tomato sauce.

Here we go, guys! Wow!

I hope the dish has a richness to it and it's full of flavour.

Because I don't have the cheese there,

I just hope those vegan versions of the cheese really come through.

Nadia, how you going here? Oh, good!

I'm just trying to whiz through everything...

So, how are you going to get around this cheese problem? Yes.

Well, what I've done over here is created some cashew parmesan cheese.

So it's got a bit of onion salt, and that nutritional yeast flavour.

Oh, OK, yeah.

And then I'm making a sauce separately.

I know it's not going to be quite the traditional, yeah.

You know what, that's got a really nice texture to it.

That's good. That's nice.

Thank you.

Great. Well, that's given me encouragement.

OK, you've got about 30 minutes, everyone.

He's been in the kitchen before.

He knows how to use the knife. Very... confident.

Today I'm cooking eggplant parmigiana stack.

I'm going to use some smoked mozzarella as well, a bit of oomph behind it.

My name's Sebastien. I love to cook Italian food.

I've always loved how simple it is and I like the idea

that it's really just three or four ingredients on a plate.

So right now I'm just cutting out the eggplant to get them

in even shapes and hopefully they cook evenly.

I'm just going to dump these in here and then I've got some breadcrumbs.

I'm using panko crumbs which is Japanese!

They, for me, have the most texture and they're not as fine.

As soon as it's got colour, I take it out.

Fingers crossed!

To start the week,

our four home cooks are facing off against apprentice chef, Giorgia.

Tonight I'll be cooking eggplant parmigiana

with smoked cheddar fonduta.

Tell me about what makes this particular dish special?

This dish here is a modernised version of a cult classic.

There's a few different elements to this dish,

there's a San Marzano sauce,

the smoked cheddar fonduta, mint oil

and of course, the eggplant.

I can see why you like her, she moves really fast.

Yeah!

Who doesn't love an eggplant parmigiana?

It's got homely ingredients,

it's got eggplant, it's got San Marzano,

it's got a cheese sauce

and it's just something that binds the home together.

I mean, the smell of it alone, like, draws you in.

Well, good luck. I'll see you in a little bit!

Yeah, come on, bella, hey! Yeah, Giorgia, come on!

Do you love cheese as much as I love cheese?

Because I really love cheese. I do.

Who doesn't love cheese?

It's just a big component of this dish as well. Yeah.

And I'm really interested to see how Nadia's going to come through.

Sebastien is stacking up his odds tonight.

He's actually making crumbed discs of eggplant,

stacking them with the sauce and the cheese in between.

Paolo's using his nonna's recipe from Sicily,

so he's putting his own little twist on it

which is putting ham through it.

I hate to think what she thinks about that.

It's dangerous, dangerous to mess with a nonna's recipe.

Sotto Sopra's apprentice chef, Giorgia,

is up against four home cooks who love to cook Italian food.

All are preparing their own take on the classic Italian dish,

eggplant parmigiana.

And blind judge Dan

will taste each dish without knowing who cooked what.

Well, I'm looking forward to the simplicity of Italian cooking.

And what better way to start off Italian Week

than eggplant parmigiana?

Such a peasant dish, such a simple dish.

So the eggplant needs to be nicely cooked,

it needs to be cut in a nice, even size.

Cheese that's on top and it's put in the oven

and it's nicely melted and caramelised.

Personally, I like my tomato sauce to not be too reduced.

I like my sauce to be quite fresh,

but it still needs to have that depth of flavour that tomatoes have.