My Favorite Recipes Collection: August 2022

Eggplant: Either you love it or you hate it ! In Middle eastern, Italian, and Indian cooking eggplant is widely used for making variety of side dishes. I think there are about 11 + varieties of eggplants, and you can cook them all differently. In India we used to use small Indian white, purple and green eggplants to make stuffed eggplants and Globe eggplant to make Bhartha and Chinese eggplants are used to make varieties of Indian curries and sauteed dishes. For this recipe, I used Italian eggplants but you can use globe eggplants as well.

Again this recipe is inspired by our amazing trip to Turkey, where we did not have any issues finding yummy vegetarian food. At the hotels in dinner buffet, there were variety of eggplant dishes from Baba Ganoush to stuffed eggplants. I was thinking of creating something similar and this is what I came up with after looking for stuffed Turkish Eggplants. Here in Middle Eastern local grocery store you can jar of smoked eggplant puree and also another spiced blend eggplant and red pepper based paste called Ajvar. This Ajvar if you recall I used it for making Turkish Bulgar pilaf. If you can't find it you can omit these two items.

You can substitute the smoked eggplant paste by grilling or broiling a generously oiled globe eggplant, until the skin is charred and removing the skin and crushing the pulp. (just like you make Bhartha for Indian cooking)

Ingredients:

4 Italian eggplants
Three tomatoes with firm skin
One medium yellow onion
3-4 red yellow and orange sweet pepper
1 small green pepper
4-5 cloves of garlic (optional or amount can be adjusted how garlicky you want your dish to be)
4-5 green onions with greens
1/2 cup of Ajvar
1/2 cup of smoked eggplant paste

1/2 cup of tomato puree (I mixed it with spicy Pace chunky salsa to get some heat and flavor)
8 table spoon of olive oil or cooking vegetable oil divided in half (you can use cooking oil spray)
Cumin seeds (optional)
2 teaspoon of salt: One for soaking the eggplant an another one for the stuffing.
1/2 teaspoon of black pepper
2 table spoon of fresh mint chopped
1 teaspoon of cumin powder
1 teaspoon of turmeric powder

I bought some spices from Turkey, (chicken spice, fish spice and sumac base salad spice) that I used one teaspoon of each but you can use all spice or any seasoning that you like.
There is no hard and fast rule, you can be creative based on taste of your palate.
Some extra fresh mint leaves for garnish
Chopped cilantro to for garnish (optional if you are not cilantro fan)

Method:

Peel the skin off of tomatoes and chop it.
Mix it with chopped mint.
Chop yellow and green onions, peppers and garlic.
Peel the eggplant like shown in picture leaving the stem intact.
Put the peeled eggplant in salted water and set aside for 15-20 min, then squeeze and pat dry.
Preheat the oven at 350.

Poke small holes in eggplant with fork as shown in the picture.
Brush it with generous amount of olive oil or spray with cooking oil spray evenly.
Place a parchment paper on baking dish.
Bake the eggplants at 350 F for 30 -35 min until soft and tender.
While the eggplants are baking you can prepare the stuffing as follows.
Heat 4 tables spoon of olive oil or vegetable cooking oil in a frying pan or wok.

When oil is hot you can add cumin seeds, (this steps is optional, but I am so used to using cumin seeds for Indian cooking, I like the flavor and taste of cumin seeds)
When these crackle you can add all the chopped onions and saute until light brown then all the peppers an garlic.
Add in chopped tomatoes and chopped mint, all the spices, salt, sugar, smoked eggplant paste and Ajvar paste if using it.
Cook for 5 min and tune the heat off and set aside.
Take out the baked eggplant out of oven.
Then cut a slit in each eggplant but going through all the way down.
Don't turn the oven off after taking eggplants out.
Preheat to 375 F while you are prepping the eggplants.
Take a fork of spoon and put it in the slit and open it up to give a boat shape and making enough space to fill the stuffing.

Spray or grease the baking dish.
Stuff the eggplant with prepared stuffing and place them in the baking dish.
Pour the tomato paste/puree over it and drizzle with remaining olive oil and bake them uncovered for 40- 45 min or until tender at 375 F.
Serve them with your favorite bread and rice dish. ( I served it with Naan and Almond / saffron Basmati rice pilaf)
You can serve this hot or at room temperature.

Enjoy !!

Recipe inspired by our trip to Turkey and stuffed eggplant Turkish dish called "Imam Bayildi" on line and adapted by Surekha from various recipes for this dish on line.

Photographs by Surekha.

As promised earlier, I am going to post more recipes of Turkish vegetarian cuisine that we had a privilege of trying when we took our tour of this amazing historical country. One of the restaurants that Gate1 tour company took us to had amazing Turkish pizza and along with other items, they also had this Bulgar pilaf, that was so light and tasty like you are eating something made out of rice or corn, I thought it was rice Bulgar and I asked the owner of this restaurant Mehmet, who was so friendly and hospitable, he said it was Rice Bulgur. Of course when I came back here I looked everywhere for this Rice Bulgar, but could not find it. I finally bought something from a middle eastern store that said Turkish Bulgar, but I think it is still made out of wheat, I don't think there is anything like Bulgar made out of rice. Please correct me if I am wrong, however I did the best I could of recreating this recipe, however I made it in Instant pot as I did not want to take a chance of overcooking or under cooking it on stove.

First time I just a simple recipe with tomato base without any veggies with 1/2 cup Bulgar then as you can see I tried it with veggies for a get together where I made 1 cup of Bulgar this time I put lot of veggies in it. I read up on line that you need to use Bulgar # 3 which means it is coarse. It comes in different grain sizes, very fine, fine, medium coarse and coarse Bulgar. Bulgar is one of ancient grains is also called cracked wheat, is a staple food in Middle Eastern cuisine. In India my mom used to make Dalia with it, which is popular breakfast meal can be made either sweet or salty, but she used medium grain for this.

It has lot of nutritional values and rich in protein, vitamin B and fiber. When I went shopping at our local middle eastern market I also picked up a jar of Ajvar which comes in mild and spicy variety, it is a ready made paste of roasted red pepper and eggplant and has some middle eastern spices in it, I used this to make Bulgar Pilaf to give its color and different flavor. I love this paste, you can make it from scratch but the one in the jar is pretty good. I also used it to make Turkish stuffed eggplants which is going to be my next post. You can just make the plain Bulgar pilaf, but love this recipe of mine after couple of trials.

Ingredients:

1 cup of # 3 grains of Bulgur.
One and 1/2 ups of water or vegetable broth
3 medium tomatoes peeled and chopped
1/4 -1/2 cup of peas
1/2 cup of shelled edamame
1/2 green pepper finely chopped
1/4 yellow pepper, 1/4 red pepper finely chopped
5 sprigs of spring onions with green finely chopped

1/2 cup of baby carrots chopped
1 large yellow onion, 1/2 sliced for garnish and half chopped to put it in pilaf
5-6 mushroom sliced divided in half one half for garnish and other half to put in the pilaf.
2 tablespoon of Ajvar paste
2 table spoon of tomato paste
1 tables spoon for fresh mint leaves chopped
3 table spoon of butter of ghee divided in 3 parts
Salt to taste I used 1 and 1/2 teaspoon
1 teaspoon of coarsely ground black pepper

1 to 1 and half teaspoon of all spice, ( I used chicken spice that I got from Turkey but it is like blend of all spices
2-3 teaspoon of cumin seeds device in three parts
1/4 teaspoon of saffron (optional)
1 teaspoon of turmeric powder (optional)
1/4 cup of cilantro for garnish (optional)

Of course I used lot of veggies, but if you wish you can only use peas of mix of frozen veggies or no veggies at all just onions and peppers, but the tomato paste and Ajvar is a must for my recipe. First pictures you see I just made it out of onions and sweet peppers and did not add any veggie and it came out pretty good too. You can be creative. You will need instant pot for this recipe, I basically followed by recipe of Indian Pilaf or Pulao that I make treating the Bulgar as rice.

Method:

Have all the veggies ready.
First I took half of slice onions and half of sliced mushrooms and prepped them for garnishing.
In a sauce pan heat 1 table spoon of butter or ghee and add cumin seeds when these crackle add onions and caramelize them on high heat than add mushrooms and saute them for 1 min and set aside.
Then in same frying pan add one table spoon of butter or ghee and add 1 teaspoon of cumin seeds.

When these crackle add chopped onions saute on high heat for few seconds and and all the chopped veggie and saute them for 1-2 min turn the heat off.

Wash Bulgar in water, just like you would wash rice to make pilaf to get the extra starch off.
Drain all the water.
Turn on the instant pot to saute, when ready add rest of the butter of ghee and cumin seeds and saute Bulgar grain for 1 min then add all the sauteed veggies (except the one for the
garnish)
Add chopped tomatoes, Ajvar, mint leaves and tomato paste and 1 and 1/2 cup of water or vegetable broth.

Add all the spices, saffron and salt.
Mix everything gently. Empty the content in another container that would fit in instant pot container on stand.
In instant pot container add 1.5 cup of water and place the cooking container with all the contents.
Cover the instant pot and turn to pressure cook on low pressure for 10 min setting with seal on.
Actually second time when I made this I had it on high pressure an it was fine.

Once 10 min are up, you can let it sit for one minute that release the pressure slowly (be careful)
Transfer the pilaf in a microwave safe serving dish.
Once you make it few time you will get the hang of it.
And by all means if you feel making it more comfortable or if you don't have instant pot than you can make it on stove or in traditional pressure cooker. Just remember you have to cook it on slow heat when cooking on open stove.

Once ready, you can garnish with caramelized onion slices and sauteed mushroom slices and cilantro if desired.
Serve with fresh juice of lime to taste, lightly sprinkled over the serving.