Sunday, May 27, 2007

Melanzane ripiene turche

This month's event 'Waiter there's something in my...' is themed 'stuffed vegetables or fruit'. So I decided that I will post the recipe for the Turkish stuffed eggplants that I helped Elif to prepare at our Turkish dinner. Elif told me that the exact name for it is Imam Bayildi, which literally means 'The Imam passed out'!!! She thinks it's becuase they're so good. :)

Imam Bayildi / Turkish Stuffed Eggplants
Ingredients
Six eggplants. Buy the small, elongated ones.
Six garlic cloves
Four big tomatoes
1 large red onion
3 small 'Italian' peppers
parseley, sugar, salt
Procedure
Peel the eggplants 'in stripes' (leave one stripe of skin and one stripe with no skin, for a total of 2 stripes with and 2 stripes without skin). Make a deep incision in them on one of the unskinned stripes, along the length (to open up a pouch to stuff them). Spread some salt on them, included inside the incision, add water on them, and set aside. Cut the tomatoes, the onions, and the garlic. Sautee onions and garlic in olive oil, and add tomatoes, a little sugar and salt. Add a few leaves of cut parseley. Remove from stove when finished sauteing. After ~ 30 min, drain the eggplants, and stir fry them, whole, in olive oil, for ~ 10 min, turning them often. Cut the eggplants along one of the skinless 'stripes', making a dip incision. With a spoon, remove the pulp. Mix the pulp with the sauteed tomatoes. Place the eggplants on a baking pan and fill them with the tomato/eggplant mixture:
Cover them with a piece of aluminum foil, and put them in the oven preheated at 350 F. Cook for ~40 minutes. In the meanwhile, stir fry the peppers, cut into halves. When the eggplants are ready, cover each of them with half pepper.
Serve them hot. They're absolutely amazing.
Check back on this post, I'll let you know when the roundup for the 'Waiter there's something in my...' is up!

4 comments:

Amit said...

There's a Turkish restaurant here in Boston run by a Turkish guy, and he has the same dish translated as "Swooning Imam." It is indeed delicious, though I didn't swoon. But then, I'm no imam. :D

Jeanne said...

Oh that's wonderful - I can just picture the Imam having a bite, being transported into raptures of delight and swooning!

This looks like a great dish - interesting how you slice stripes into the aubergine, which I've never seen before.

Thanks so much for sharing this recipe and hope to see you again at next month's WTSIM :)

chemcookit said...

Amit - eheh, I'm glad you got to try it!
Jeanne - thanks! I really liked this dish too.

Minik Kus said...

Wow, italianintheus cooks Turkish meals :) It is really great to see one of our recipes in your blog :)I was just searching blogs and I came across with yours. Everything seems delicious :D