Eggplant Parmesan

My sister got me I'm Just Here For the Food by Alton Brown.  The book gave me lots of recipes I want to follow (but not necessarily to the letter)! The first one is eggplant parmesan.

Chopped eggplant. Look familiar?

On the baking dish.

Supposedly the key to frying is to get the water out, so that's what I'm doing here.

Kosher salt.  Alton Brown says to put kosher salt on EVERYTHING. I'm running out.

Mashing the water out with a baking dish.

Eggs for the batter. Note the chocolate burn is still there.

Dry (hopefully) eggplant.

 Now I'm supposed to wash all the kosher salt off. What a waste of salt!

 Into the flour...

 And into the egg.

All my eggplant in the egg.

Time to start frying.

The batter is staying on remarkably well.

 The fried ones are supposed to stay warm in the oven while the rest get fried.

The later ones were fried a little bit better so I'm going to put the first set in again.

 More evenly fried.

 Now the slices are supposed to get stacked onto each other with cheese in between.

Um, I was supposed to use tomato sauce but I didn't have any so I tried spaghetti sauce but that had mold in it. So I'm using tartar sauce.

They're supposed to be 3-high stacks, but I don't have enough slices to do more than one. Maybe I cut the slices too thickly.

 The finished stacks, with grated cheese on top.

 Time to bake.

 The baked end product.

This was definitely the best eggplant I've made, except for one small thing: the tartar sauce clashed horribly with the eggplant and cheese. Next time I am going to use proper tomato sauce and it will be great. Maybe there is something to following recipes after all...