Baked Eggplant Kebab

November 19, 2019 by Gizem in Dinner, Beef

What makes you home sick? Yesterday I was watching the Netflix show Chef’s Table, specifically, the episode featuring Turkish chef Musa Dağdeviren. I don’t know whether it was the music that plays at all the right moments synchronized with amazing cinematography or all the familiar sights and sounds emanating from the TV screen, I found myself sobbing uncontrollably at every sight of food. And this is the third time I have seen that episode so I knew exactly what was coming. After watching Chef’s Table all I could think about was how much I missed eggplant kebab so I found myself in the kitchen making this for dinner.

Every summer I spent with my grandparents in Alanya I secretly wished my grandma would make some eggplant kebab. It was not her most popular dish compared to her manti or her dolmas but to me it was special. She generally made it right after we harvest some fresh eggplants from the garden. I modified her recipe a bit and converted it from the stovetop to the oven but at its core, it is still the same dish. I know eggplant season is technically over and everyone moved onto pumpkin, cranberries and turkey but if you get tired of all the Thanksgiving food, try this eggplant kebab for a change and I promise you will be coming back for more.

Tips:

I prefer using skinny and long eggplants for this dish. The really big and plump eggplants result in very large slices and they don’t fit into the baking pan.

Pair this dish with some buttery rice pilaf.

Yields: 6 servings Time: 1hr 30 minutes

Ingredients

3 medium sized eggplants

For the meatballs:

1 lbs lean ground beef

1/4 cup breadcrumbs

1/4 cup parsley, chopped

1 cup onion, grated

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 teaspoon cumin

1 teaspoon marash or aleppo pepper

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon black pepper

For the sauce:

1 tablespoon tomato paste

1 tomato, chopped

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

1 cup water

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 400F.

2. Wash the eggplants and peel them in alternating stripes. You can also leave them unpeeled, completely up to you.

3. Fill a bowl with cold water and add 1 tablespoon of salt. Mix to dissolve the salt. Slice the eggplants in 1/2 inch rounds and transfer them to the bowl with salt-water. Soak eggplants while preparing the meatballs. Salt-water reduced the bitterness of the eggplants and avoids browning.

4. In a separate bowl, combine ground beef, breadcrumbs, parsley, grated onion, minced garlic cloves, cumin, marash pepper, salt and black pepper. Mix the ingredients until everything is incorporated nicely.

5. Using your hands, make flat meatballs that have roughly the same diameter as the eggplant slices. You should aim to have 35-40 meatballs.

6. In a 9 inch round cake pan, arrange the slices of eggplants and meatballs in alternating order, one eggplant slice followed by one meatball. Once you complete the outermost ring, move inwards and repeat until the whole pan is full. If there is a small gap in the center, you can fill it with a tomato slice.

7. In a pan over low heat, mix tomato paste, chopped tomato, water, salt and pepper until tomato paste dissolves. Pour to sauce over the eggplants and meatballs.

8. Bake for 50-60 minutes until the eggplants are soft and meatballs are cooked-through.

Enjoy!

Braised Eggplant and Lamb with Yogurt

November 08, 2019 by Gizem in Dinner

It is finally eggplant season! Nothing makes me happier than seeing all types of purple magical goodness all over farmers markets. I already told you that fried eggplants are my absolute favorite but I love eggplants cooked in any way, braised, roasted or broiled. Also who doesn’t like a purple vegetable!?

I cooked this braised eggplant and lamb for the monthly cookbook club at World Spice. I love bookclubs and used to have one back in New York but, a cookbook club? Sign me up please! Every month World Spice picks a cookbook to cook from and every member of the club brings a dish from the featured book. This month’s cookbook was Joshua McFadden’s award winning book Six Seasons. When I saw this braised eggplant and lamb recipe in the book, the stars were aligned. I sent an email to Sherrie (the cookbook club’s organizer) crossing all my fingers that no one has signed up for this recipe. The dish was so yummy and it was such a hit that I asked Joshua for his permission to publish the recipe here. He was super nice and said yes.

The cookbook club was so much fun. We arranged all of our dishes on the counter and they looked like a rainbow of vegetables. I tasted over fifteen dishes from Six Seasons and each and every single one of them was delicious. The book is split into six chapters, highlighting vegetables through their peak seasons using various cooking methods. I love cookbooks but I am very picky about which ones I purchase. I don’t want to commit to buying a book (given they are not cheap) only to end up not using it. If I buy a book, I want the recipes to be a part of my repertoire. World Spice cookbook club was an awesome way to test many recipes from one book and I can confidently say that Six Seasons is going to be a go-to book in my library. If you are in Seattle, you should join us for the next gathering in September where we will be cooking Korean recipes from My Rice Bowl.

I cook lamb very rarely because it is hard to cook it right and raw lamb has a distinct smell which I am not a huge fan of. This recipe is not quick but it is so worth it. The lamb cooks to perfection and melts in your mouth without stealing the spotlight from the eggplant. Joshua recommends serving this dish with Israeli couscous or flatbreads (for which he has a recipe in the book as well). I made the flatbreads for the cookbook club. They tasted very authentic and they were easy to make. For the flatbread recipe you need to buy Joshua’s book (do it!) but without further ado, here is the recipe for braised eggplant and lamb.

Keep in mind that I made this recipe enough for a large group so that everyone can have a taste. As it is, the recipe should be enough for 8 full servings or 16 mini-servings for a gathering like a potluck.

Yields: 8 servings Time: 2.5 – 3 hours

Recipe from Six Seasons by Joshua McFadden

Ingredients

3-4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

3 pounds lamb shoulder, chopped into large chunks

3-4 eggplants, peeled in stripes and chopped into large cubes (about 2 pounds)

4 garlic cloves, smashed and peeled

1 yellow onion, diced (about 3/4 cup)

1 tablespoon ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon ground allspice

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground coriander

3/4 teaspoon Aleppo or Marash pepper

1 bay leaf

2 cups water

Kosher salt

Black pepper, freshly ground

1 cup plain yogurt, to serve

Preparation

1. Heat the olive oil in a large dutch oven over high heat. Pat dry the lamb shoulder chunks and season them generously with salt and pepper.

2. Cook the lamb chunks, in batches, until brown on all sides, for 5-7 minutes. Set the browned lamb chunks aside. In between each batch, add a bit more olive oil if needed. At this point, we want the lamb to have a nice brown color but we don’t want it fully cooked through.

3. Reduce the heat to medium and add 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Peel the smashed garlic and cook for a couple of minutes, until fragrant. Add in the diced onion and cook for another 4-5 minutes, until the onions are golden.

4. Add in all the spices, the bay leaf and a pinch of salt. Give it all a stir and cook for a minute, until all the spices are mixed and fragrant. Pause for a second and inhale the amazing scent of spices. At this point, my kitchen smelled amazing.

5. Return all the lamb with their juices, back into the pot. Add in 2 cups of water to barely cover the lamb. Don’t forget to reduce the amount of water if you are cooking a smaller portion of lamb. Bring the water to a simmer, cover and cook on low heat until the lamb is almost tender. This part took approximately 2 hours for me because I wanted a melt-in-your-mouth texture. Check on your lamb every 30 minutes or so to test its tenderness and to make sure there is enough liquid in your pot.

6. Peel the eggplant lengthwise, in stripes of black and white (see this pic). I like to leave on some of the peel as it adds some color to the dish. If you prefer, you can peel it all off.

7. Chop the eggplant in large chunks and add into the pot. Cover the pot and continue simmering in low heat for 30 more minutes. Every 5 minutes or so, I gave everything a stir to make sure the eggplants are evenly folded into the lamb.

8. You can add more salt and pepper to taste before serving. Serve with a large dollop of yogurt on top and with a side of Israeli couscous, flatbreads or white rice. If you like spicy flavors, this recipe can carry hot sauce really well. Joshua serves it with his spiced green sauce (recipe in the book) but I also recommend a serrano or habanero based hot sauce like Secret Aardvark. Enjoy!

* Looks like I had a mini brain freeze and forgot to photograph steps 6 and 7. I am very sorry! I will do better next time, I promise.

Fried Eggplants with Yogurt

October 31, 2019 by Gizem in Dinner, Meze

Eggplants are one of my all time favorite vegetables. They just taste amazing whichever way you cook them. You can stew them, roast them, fry them. It all works. But if you ask me to choose, fried eggplants get my top vote. This recipe doesn’t use batter to fry the eggplants which results in super light, earthy and melt-in-your-mouth eggplants.

Fried eggplant is a common summer meze in Turkish cuisine. They are served either with yogurt or tomato sauce. The tomato sauce version is called shakshuka (not to be confused with the poached egg dish from Middle East). For this recipe, I will use yogurt and save the shakshuka recipe for another blog post. The yogurt in this recipe balances the earthy flavor of the eggplant so well and lightens up the dish.

I highly recommend serving this dish shortly after freshly frying the eggplants. Eating them freshly fried is very similar to the satisfaction of eating a freshly baked cookie, right out of the oven. I used to steal a couple freshly fried slices from the plate when my mom was busy frying another batch and inevitably, get scolded. I have to admit, I never felt guilty.

Yields: 4-6 servings Time: 40 minutes

Ingredients

2 eggplants

1 and 1/2 cups vegetable oil

5 spoonfuls of plain yogurt

3 cloves of garlic, minced

2 teaspoons salt

Preparation

1. Wash the eggplants and slice off their caps. Peel the eggplants in a stripe pattern, alternating by peeling and not peeling lengthwise (see pictures).

2. Slice the eggplants crosswise into 1/3 inch thick slices.

3. Fill a large bowl with cold tap water. Add 2 teaspoons of salt into the water and stir until it dissolves. Put all the sliced eggplants into the salt water. This helps with two things: one, it keeps the eggplant slices from browning and two, it removes the bitter taste of the eggplant.

4. In a large frying pan over medium-high heat, heat 1/2 cup of the vegetable oil. Eggplants absorb a lot of oil, so instead of adding all of the oil at once, I add it to the pan in increments as I fry.

5. Using a paper towel, pat dry 5-6 slices of eggplants and transfer to the frying pan containing the hot oil. A note of caution: if you don’t pat the eggplants dry, water touching the hot oil will create splashes and you can burn yourself, so please don’t skip this step.

6. Fry each side of the eggplant until it reaches a golden color. In the beginning, when your oil is not hot enough, it might take up to 2-3 minutes per side to fry the eggplant. Once the oil is hot enough, it will take as quick as 45 seconds to a minute per side to fry the eggplant.

7. Place a paper towel on a large plate. Transfer the fried eggplant slices onto the paper towel to soak excess oil.

8. Continue to repeat steps 5-7 until all eggplants slices are fried, adding more oil to the pan when needed.

9. For the sauce, combine yogurt and garlic in a bowl. Add salt to taste. Mix until the yogurt is smooth. Drizzle some yogurt sauce on the eggplants or serve on the side.