Step by step
Make the tomato sauce first: fry the garlic with the oil, then pour the tomato passata and, when half cooked, add the basil leaves.
Tips
To prepare the best ‘parmigiana’, you should buy top quality, large aubergines, oval, shiny and light purple; they should not prove neither too hard nor too soft to the touch.
Trivia
The first recipe for baked aubergine with parmesan seems to have been written in ‘Il cuoco galante’ by Vincenzo Corrado, an author originally from Puglia but who was in service with various Neapolitan families.