Turkish Cuisine: Turkish Stuffed Eggplant

If you are not a fan of eggplant or have never had it before, please try this delicious Turkish Stuffed Eggplant, or Karniyarik,when you visit Turkey. This is a favorite among the locals and of those travelling through.

For those adventurous souls who would like to try making it for themselves, here is a recipe from Enes, one of our team members at Dos Plumas who also happens to love cooking. This is one of his specialties!

When choosing eggplants, look for small eggplants that are firm and buy them right before you are planning on making this dish.

Stuffed Eggplant

Ingredients:

2 Tbs olive oil

canola or vegetable oil to fry eggplant

6 eggplants, peeled in stripes lengthwise

2 chopped onions

2-3 cloves garlic, minced

1 diced green pepper

1/2 lb ground meat

1 diced tomato

2 Tbs tomato paste

1/2 bunch finely chopped parsley

1/4 tsp ground pepper

2 tsp salt

1 cup hot water

1 tomato sliced in half moons

3 green banana peppers cut in half lengthwise

Directions:

• Peel eggplants leaving lengthwise stripes and then put them in salt water for 10 minutes. This helps to remove the bitter taste of the eggplant.
• Meanwhile, heat frying oil in a deep pot. Make sure that oil is hot, otherwise eggplant will soak up the oil.
• Take eggplants from water and dry them. Fry eggplants whole in hot oil.
• After frying eggplants, place them on a paper towel to soak excess oil, then place eggplant in a baking dish.
• Heat olive oil in a frying pan. Add onions and cook for 3 – 4 minutes.
• Add garlic and diced green pepper and cook for 1 – 2 minutes.
• Add ground meat and cook
• Add diced tomato and tomato paste to pan. Stir and cook.
• Add chopped parsley, salt and pepper to taste. Mix well.
• Split eggplants open on one side, but leave the tops and bottom attached.
• Stuff eggplant with meat mixture
• On top of each eggplant, place 1 half moon tomato slice and 1 half of green banana pepper
• Pour 1 cup hot water in baking pan. In 400F preheated oven, bake eggplants 10 – 15 minutes until the green peppers on top are baked.

Serve with rice and yogurt.

Afiyet Olsun!

Last updated by admin at December 17, 2010.