Vegetable Stew

I believe that this vegetable dish is created by someone who hates wasting foods. The main characteristic of it is that it contains more than two kinds of vegetables. You can use any vegetable you have in your refrigerator. I generally cook it with the leftover vegetables, so I don’t need to do shopping specially for this dish. We buy several vegetables when we shop from the bazaar and we cook each of them on each day during the weekdays. For example, one daywe cook a dish with green beans, the other day a dish with eggplant, and so on. As we are just two people (my husband and I), less than half of these vegetables is always left each time we cook something. Then at the end of the week, we combine all the leftover vegetables, which resulted in a tasty vegetable stew.

In fact, this dish has two main types in Turkish cuisine: Summer Vegetable Stew (Yaz Türlüsü) and Winter Vegetable Stew (Kış Türlüsü) depending on the season of the vegetables we use.Summer vegetable stew mainly contains green beans, okra, zucchini, eggplant, potatoes, green and red peppers as these are fresh in Summer. As for Winter vegetable stew, the vegetables above are replaced by the vegetables that can be found fresh in Winter such as leek, celery root and carrot. Besides the changing vegetables, we always have onion and tomatoes in both versions. However, as tomatoes are fresher in Summer, we can use more of them in Summer vegetable stew. Another difference between these versions of stew is that Winter vegetable stew may have some meat whereas Summer vegetable stew is generally prefered with olive oil and meat free.

Which version do you think is mine here in this post? It is in between the Summer and winter versions. As it’s still possible to find fresh eggplants, and zucchini these days, I couldn’t miss this opportunity. However, we can’t see okra at bazaar anymore as it’s exactly a vegetable of hotter days, so I couldn’t add it to my stew. Also, I used carrot, which is absolutely a Winter vegetable, to make the stew more colorful. That’s why I can’t call it either Summer or Winter stew. How about calling it no season vegetable stew?

Most Turkish women saute onion in olive oil and then add the other vegetables to make a vegetables stew, but I prefer placing the vegetables in layers in the pot and add olive oil on their top. This way, you can feel the flavor of olive oil more and I read somewhere that this method is better for our health.

As this is an adjustable dish, feel free to change the vegetables or the amounts of them.

Türlü
Ingredients
- 10 green beans
- 2 medium size eggplants
- 1 large potato
- 1 medium sized zucchini
- 1 big carrot
- 1 medium sized onion
- 4 medium sized tomatoes
- 1 red pepper
- 1 green pepper
- 4 cloves garlic
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- Salt to taste
- 1 tsp black pepper
- ¼ cup hot water

Slice unpeeled eggplants and zucchini into circles. Peel the carrot and slice it into circles, too. Chop the potato in cubes. Cut the beans in half finger size. Peel and dice the tomatoes and onions. Chop the peppers. Slice the garlic cloves. Put these vegetables in seperate bowls to make it easy to arrange them in the pot.

Place the carrots at the bottom of the pot as the first layer. Then put the green beans and potatoes. Now toss half of the peppers, onions, garlic and tomatoes on them. Go on with eggplants and zucchini coins. Finally, add the rest of the peppers, onions, garlic and tomatoes on the top. Sprinkle salt and black pepper on them and drizzle olive oil. Cover the pot and cook it on low heat. After about 10 minutes, add hot water and go on cooking on low heat for about 40 minutes.

Vegetable stew is served hot with some rice pilaf and with a bowl of yogurt near it.

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Eggplant Feast

Zeytinyagli Patlican

When Summer is close, we start to cook different dishes from eggplants as we know that these are real eggplants not fake as in Winter time. And this one is our favorite. The best part of Spring and Summer for me is that I have more time in a day, it doesn’t quickly get dark here after March. Day time is longer than night time. I can’t take the advantage of open markets in Winter very often because generally when I leave work, it’s already dark and here open markets are “open” just during day time. But beginning from March, they are open longer and I enjoy shopping from open markets as I desire.

In Turkey open markets are not stable, they have certain places on each day of a week. The reason for this is to provide the same chance to all neighborhoods. As you know, everything is cheaper and more fresh in open markets, so people prefer shopping there. On Monday, the open market is in our neighborhood, close to our home and on Friday, it is close to the school I work. So today, after leaving school, on the way home, I popped round the open market and came home with several bags. I was a bit tired and I didn’t want to wait long for dinner, so when I saw some very fresh eggplants, I made up my mind. Although my hubby is a meat lover, he adores this eggplant dish and never refuses to eat it. Besides its hearty taste, the easiness of its preperation was my concern today.

And we had an unexpected guest for dinner. Our neighbor forgot her house keys and rang our bell just as we were sitting dinner table. She asked if she could wait until her husband came, we certainly welcomed her and put one more plate on the table. We had our dinner together and she said that she was so lucky to forget her keys as she had the chance of tasting and learning this quick eggplant dish.

Ingredients
-3 eggplants
-4 middle sized tomatoes, diced
-2 green peppers, chopped
-4 cloves garlic, sliced into two
-1 onion, chopped
-1/2 tbsp tomato paste(optional)
-1/2 tsp sugar
-1tsp salt
-1tsp black pepper
-4tbsp natural olive oil

Wash the eggplants and throw the leaves away. Do not cut the whole stems, leave a little piece of it. I didn’t peel them, but if you like, you can. Cut them in two from the middle horizantally. Then, grab the half with the stem and cut them  into four lengthwise until the stem. Do not cut them completely. As for the other half, you can cut them in finger shape. Wait these in a salty water for at least 15 minutes so that the bitterness of eggplants goes away.

Heat the oil in a pot and saute the chopped onion until golden. Drain the eggplants and add them in the pot. Cook them over medium heat until the eggplants change their color. Then add the paste, tomatoes, peppers and garlic. Sprinkle sugar, salt and black pepper and cover the pot. Cook them over low heat for about 40 minutes and do not open the cover until it’s done.

You can garnish it with some leaves of basil and if you serve a bowl of home made yogurt near it, it’s inevitable to feel in heaven.

The Perfect Couple

This was the first date of Miss Eggplant and Mr Cucumber. They came accross with each other in several open markets and covered markets before, and they were both impressed by each other. Eventually they could escape from the their stands and met at a solitary neighborhood. Miss Eggplant complimented Mr Cucumber about his cooling and skin beautifying effects while he flattered Miss Eggplant about her unforgettable taste when prepared with natural olive oil. He added “You are the best cure for skin cancer! We’ll make a perfect couple as we are both curative for skin.” They felt closer with these nice words and decided to go to a patisserie for a romantic chat. (drawing by mom)

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