Double Baked Turkish Stuff Eggplants My Way

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.