Imambayildi

This beautiful vegetable with purple dress is one of my favorite, and of all Turkish people, so we have many different dishes made from it in our cuisine. I always think that eggplant (patlican in Turkish) is like a woman ready for a party with her showy clothes, looking so charming. In Turkish we even use eggplant to define the color purple, we call that color ‘eggplant purple’. We generally see these beauties during summer and fall at bazaar. They have mainly two kinds in Turkey. One of them is short in height and plump, like a pear in shape, but fatter than it, which we call “bostan patlicanı” (garden eggplant) in Turkish. And the other, which I used for this dish, is in average size, like a zucchini and we call it “kemer patlican”. I don’t know if these two kinds have special names in English. If you know, I’d be so glad to hear.

It’s always good to know what eggplant dish you will cook before buying as it depends on the dish to buy either pear shaped or zucchini shaped eggplant. For example, if you’re planning to stuff them, pear shaped eggplants are perfect. It is easier to carve and stuff these as they have a shorter body. However, if you want to make eggplant kebab,then you must prefer zucchini shaped eggplants. The body of these are better to be cut in circles. You know the size of these circles must be almost the same with meatballs. As you see in pictures here, we also buy zucchini shaped eggplants to make imambayildi. Why? Because traditionally this dish must be in a boat shape.

As for the name of this traditional Turkish dish, I didn’t translate it into English as it may sound nonsense. The pure translation is this: The Imam Fainted. Funny, isn’t it? I love not only the dish itself, but also its name. There are several versions of the story of this name. But I want to share the most common and the shortest one. Here it goes!

Once upon a time, there was an imam in a country. He picked some eggplants from his garden on a hot and muggy summer day and took them home. He asked her wife to cook a tasty dish with these eggplants. His wife wanted to make a different dish and she first fried the eggplants, cooked tomatoes, peppers etc in another pot and combined them in a boat shape, then cooked it in oven. However, she put too much oil to the dish. The imam couldn’t refuse to eat it, but fainted at the end of his meal with the effect of hot weather and too much oil. His wife screamed “the imam fainted!” (imam bayildi). Since then, this dish has been called imambayildi (two words combined).

In another version, it is said that the imam fainted even before eating, when he saw the amount of the oil in the dish as oil was so expensive those times.

I don’t love frying something in a pan as I have to clean all the kitchen afterwards, I prefer doing this process in oven. How? It’s in the recipe.

If you get curious enough about imambayildi, let me stop telling stories and give its recipe:

Ingredients (servings :4)
-    4 medium sized eggplants (zucchini shaped)
-    1 medium onion, diced
-    2 green peppers, chopped
-    3 medium sized tomatoes, peeled and diced
-    3 cloves garlic, minced
-    2 tbsp minced fresh mint
-    2 tbsp minced parsley
-    Olive oil
-    Salt to taste
-    2 sugar cubes
-    ¼ cup water
Wash the eggplants. Peel them lengthwise, leaving strips. Cut the green parts around the stems, but leave the stems.

Wait the eggplants for about 15min. in a bowl of salted water to remove their bitterness. Then squeeze them gently and dry with paper towel. To let the heat enter their inside, pierce them on their several parts with a fork.

Preheat the oven to 200C.
Oil a small oven tray and lay the eggplants in it. Then pour 1 ½ tbsp olive oil on each. Put it in oven and cook until they get tender enough (about 30 minutes). You can check it with a small knife.

Meanwhile, we can prepare the filling. Heat 3 tbsp olive oil in a pot and saute the onion. Add peppers and saute. Add tomatoes and garlic, cook it about 5 minutes. Put 2 sugar cubes and enough salt in it. Add fresh mint and parsley, stir a few times and take it from fire.

Take the eggplants out from oven. Cut their stomachs so gently, not too deep. Grab a dessert spoon and give it a boat shape by moving their sides gently aside.

Now put the filling mixture evenly into their opened stomach. Drizzle little olive oil on each eggplant. And pour ¼ cup water in the tray. Cook it in oven at 180C for 40 minutes.

This is a kind of traditional Turkish olive oil dishes that may be served warm or cold either as a main dish or as a side dish. Personally, I love to eat it dipping some bread into its ‘stomach’ and a cup of yogurt goes very well with it.

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Leek With Olive Oil

Zeytinyagli Pirasa

Leek is one of the vegetables that many children hate eating. In Turkey, moms struggle a lot to have their children eat it. There becomes an invisible fight between moms and children and the winner of the fight depends on moms’ different kinds of methods. Some moms threaten them to tell their father that they don’t eat leek. Some remind their children of poor people who can not find any food. Some make leeks talk to their children, leeks say that they feel so sorry when they are refused and they ask crying why children don’t love them. You decide which method is more effective.

You may ask the method of my mom. I think she was luckier as we had some vegetables in our garden including leeks and she used to take me with her to pick some leeks. She used to love the vegetables she grew with dad so much that she used to pick all vegetables by flattering and talking to them. As a child I thought that these vegetables were like members of our family, so never refused eating it. And I understood how delicious it is when I grew older, it’s one of my favorite dishes now. Most children feels the same when they grow, but of course there may be some stubborn ones.

Olive oil is the key point of this dish. If you have the chance of finding natural olive oil, it becomes more tasty. It is served  cold or warm (but not hot) as a main dish or a side dish/appetizer.

Ingredients
-4 leeks
-1 carrot
-1 lemon, squeezed
-1tsp salt
-1tsp sugar (or one cube sugar)
-1/4 cup rice, washed
-1/4 cup water
-1/3 cup olive oil

Some people also add onion, but as leek itself is coming from onion family, I think making it without onion is better.

Cut the tops of the leek and wash them well. Cut them into diagonal slices. Set them aside.

Peel the carrot and cut it vertically into four pieces, then slice them as big as a half finger.

Put half of the olive oil in a pot and saute the carrot slices first. Add sugar and then the leeks. Stir them well and add the lemon juice and cover the pan. Cook it over medium heat for 15 minutes and then add rice, water and salt in it. Bring the heat to the lowest and cook it until the rice cooks. After it is cooked, let it cool in the pan. And finally drizzle the rest of the olive oil on it before serving. This is another important tip; when you add some raw olive oil before serving, all the dishes with olive oil tastes even better.

Mom And Child Leeks

The child leek comes home with a big disappointment and tells her mom that she doesn’t want to go out any more. It is her first day at school and she’s learnt that children don’t like leeks. It is a shocking reality for her as she’s always dreamed of meeting some human friends and presenting its taste to them.

When the mom leek sees her daughter at the garden gate with a down face, she decides to ask some help from her. She wants her daughter to forget her sadness for a while. While they are hanging the washed clothes together, she tells her daughter that all children will love them if they are cooked right. (drawing by mom)

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Stuffed Grapevine Leaves

In Turkish cuisine, there are a lot of dishes that are stuffed with different kinds of mixtures. We can stuff any vegetable or even meat with something. We fill peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, potatoes, zucchini, any vegetable that can contain something inside, with a kind of rice mixture or sometimes with cheese. We also fill chicken, some fishes or a part of lamb with some other mixtures. Moreover, we can create the “container” ourselves by kneading different kinds of dough (of flour, ground wheat or semolina).

We use grapevine leaves for a kind of stuffed dish. People generally prefer it with different kinds of rice mixture (we call it grapevine with olive oil), but there are also people adding minced meat into this rice mixture (we call it grapevine with meat).

If you ask me, the one with olive oil (rice only) is better as this is a kind of cold dish. If you make it with minced meat, you should serve it hot. Stuffed grapevine leaves may be eaten as a main dish with a dollop of yogurt near it after a hot soup,  or it may accompany other appetizers near raki (it beacomes an appetizer too). Moreover, it can also be your snack, which is my favorite.

Generally, I don’t prefer making it in small amounts, I make a pot of stuffed grapevine leaves and keep the leftovers in refrigerator. Whenever I feel hungry, it makes me happy to know that I have some stuffed grapevine leaves waiting for me in my kitchen. I think, it’s the same for others. When I open the refrigerator to snack a few stuffed leaves for the second or third time, I always realize that, it’s not just me who is throwing them one by one to my stomach. And most probably, I find the pot empty the next time.

There are even different versions of  that rice mixture filling depending on the regions. Some make it with just rice and onion, some add a lot of greens in it, some add tomatoes and pepper paste, some add currant and pine nut, some add little sugar in it, some don’t, some saute this filling mixture before stuffing the leaves, some don’t. You see, there are a lot of versions, you can add your own ingredient to make it peculiar to yourself.

Here is my recipe:

Ingredients
•    500 gr grapevine leaves (canned or fresh ones)

For filling mixture:
•    2 cups rice
•    5 onions
•    1 tomato
•    2 cloves garlic
•    Half bunch of parsley
•    Half bunch of dill
•    1 lemon, juice only
•    1 tbsp pepper or tomato paste
•    1 tsp dry mint
•    1 tsp salt
•    1 tsp black pepper
•    ½ tsp cinnamon
•    1 cup extra virgin olive oil

If you have canned leaves, you don’t need to do any work on them,  just washing well is enough. But if you have fresh ones, do the following:

Put a liter of water in a pot and boil it. When it boils, put the washed leaves in the pot. And boil them until they change from green to yellowish (about 5 minutes). You shouldn’t keep them in hot water too long, otherwise they get too soft to be folded. Drain them and wash again with cold water and put them aside.

To prepare the filling; first wash the rice and drain it well. Put it in a large bowl. Then chop onions, garlic, tomato, dill, parsley one by one and add them into the bowl. Then pour half of the olive oil and lemon juice in it. Put the pepper paste and stir. Now it comes to spices. You can be as creative as you can in this part. I put black pepper (so important for its flavor in this dish), cinnamon and dry mint besides salt. Combine them well. I don’t cook this mixture, I use it raw whereas some prefer sauting it a little.

Cover the bottom of the pot with grapevine leaves. We’ll put the stuffed leaves on them.

Now we can pass to stuffing and folding part. Take one grapevine leaf, cut its stem and lay it on a plate or counter.  Put its veiny part (the darker colored part) upside. Put some filling mixture on the larger side, the side of its stem. Do not put too much filling, otherwise it may protrude.

Fold one side on the filling, then fold the other side.

And fold the larger parts on these.

And roll it to wrap it up. Put it in the pot. Do the same until you finish the leaves.

Lay the stuffed leaves in the pot side by side, without leaving any space between each.

When you put all of them in the pot lining one above another, put a dish upside down on the top to prevent them from scattering. Pour 1 or  1 ½ cup water, depending on the depth of your pot. The level of water shouldn’t pass over the stuffed leaves, it should be in the middle. And pour ½ cup olive oil on it. Put the lid on the pot and cook it on the lowest heat for about 2 hours. Then check it if it’s done. If the rice in it is cooked enough, that’s fine. Take it from fire and let it cool. Then you can take it on a service plate and garnish it with lemon slices.

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