This is truly a legendary dish of Turkish cuisine, and its name can be literally translated as "a priest in a swoon" or "the imam was delighted." Of course, we will talk about the dish of Turkish Imam Bayalad. And we will try to cook it with you today.
A bit of history
Turkish dish of Imam Bayaldi has its own mythology. Of course, why these blue, stuffed and cooked in the form of a boat, coupled with vegetables and tomato, got hold of such an authentic name, nobody knows for sure. Legends tell: the reason for this was the excellent taste and aroma, from which you lick your fingers and lose your head.
Other stories tell how a certain imam married with the daughter of an olive oil merchant (which was a very expensive commodity in those years). And the girl received as a dowry as many as twelve cans of the product. And after the wedding, she delighted her husband for twelve days, serving her favorite meal - eggplant boats with filling for a meal. He was delighted with the delicious food. And when on the 13th day he did not receive the adorable dish, he asked his wife about what, in fact, was the matter. She admitted that all the time she cooked delicious eggplant in precious oil, which went to the dowry and was already over. Then the imam lost consciousness. Either from the fact that I realized how much this pleasure cost, or from the fact that I decided that I could no longer buy this expensive oil and enjoy this delicious dish again.
So the name of the dish appeared - “Imam Bayaldy”. In Turkish, given the simple recipe, it is prepared easily and simply. Fortunately, the ingredients are always at hand - especially during the harvest season.
How to cook Imam Bayald in Turkish: recipe
But can you and I allow ourselves such a pleasure - to prepare a dish-legend of oriental cuisine? The Turkish dish of Imam Bayaldi has quite a few cooking variations.
It can be done with minced meat, it can be done with nuts, and various slicing of the ingredients themselves is also practiced. There is also a purely vegetable recipe for this snack - just deliciously delicious! Moreover, the imam of the bayalah can be consumed hot as an independent dish, or it can be served as cold as an appetizer. And in both cases it will be very tasty.
Ingredients
To prepare authentic dishes we need:
- a kilo of blue ones;
- a couple of medium-sized carrots;
- a pair of onions;
- a pound of tomatoes.
And also: a few cloves of garlic (if you like more sharply, you can add more), 3-4 large spoons of olive oil, hot pepper, a spoonful of natural tomato paste.
How to cook
We start cooking:
- My eggplant, clear of the stalks. Remove the skin along the strips (so that each vegetable turns out to be striped) and soak for some time in salted water at room temperature - so they give up their excess bitterness.
- At this time, peel and grate the carrots coarsely. And peel the onions and garlic and finely chop. We cut the tomatoes into cubes (to remove or not to remove the skin from them - decide for yourself, but, by the way, it is not removed in the Turkish recipe).
- Stew prepared vegetables in olive oil over low heat: first, onion with garlic until transparent, then add carrots and after a couple of minutes - tomatoes. Salt and add hot pepper.
- Stuffed eggplant with a prepared mixture of vegetables. To do this, take them out of salted water and make a longitudinal section, taking out the excess flesh and replacing it with stewed vegetables (but leave a little "mincemeat" in a frying pan - just a couple of spoons).
Next, let's do the sauce:
- We part tomato paste in half a glass of water and pour it into a frying pan, where we have leftover vegetables. Stew for five minutes (for lovers of sweet and sour effect, a spoonful of sugar is added).
- We spread the blue with minced meat inside in a baking sheet, oiled. Pour the sauce and send into the oven, heated to a temperature of 180 ° C. Bake our eggplant for about one hour. We serve eggplant in Turkish - the imam of the baiyala, sprinkled with herbs.
Some subtleties of cooking
In the execution of the dishes by various chefs, there are some differences. For example, you can cut the eggplant in half already after soaking in salted water, then drying them on a towel (it is then useful to remove excess oil).
You can pre-fry blue in oil (they are already characteristic crust during further cooking in the oven and do not dry out during baking).
Some housewives also use not chili, but a green chilli pepper, not so burning (seeds need to be removed to reduce its severity). And in the east, when cooking the Turkish imam, the Turkish bayalids usually add a little sugar to the filling so that the sauce opens, tastes better, brighter. Blue can also be stuffed with walnuts.
Turkish Imam Bayalah for the winter
Such a tasty and healthy dish can be prepared for the winter. There is nothing complicated about it. The ingredients are all the same as in the main recipe, probably excluding parsley. You can also add a spoonful of sugar and a spoonful of vinegar to each jar of billet - so to speak, to be sure, so as not to swell. But you can not add it - everything will depend on the place chosen for storage. If you store the dish at the bottom of the refrigerator, then additional sterilization is not even required.
- My eggplant and peel. Remove the strips with a knife along the entire vegetable: the eggplant should look like a zebra in appearance: a white strip, a black strip. The peduncle can not be removed, but only slightly shortened. And after we cut the blue ones along the fruit in half.
- Pour cool water into a deep container, add a pinch of salt, put halves of the vegetable there (so that excessive bitterness comes out). Leave for 20 minutes.
- We prepare the rest of the vegetables. Onion cut into half rings. Garlic with green pepper finely chopped.
- Peel the tomatoes and cut them into cubes.
- Cover the baking sheet with foil, turn on the oven and heat it to 200 ° C. If there is a grill function, it will be even better.
- We halve the eggplant (it’s better to take small ones so that they fit in the jars) we blot with a paper towel and spread on the baking sheet of the oven. Grease each piece with olive oil.
- We bake in the oven until the blue ones become ruddy, non-solid inside.
- Prepare the fill, as in the previous recipe.
- In the prepared jars, add the eggplant and top it with sauce. Further - at your choice - can be sterilized additionally along with the contents. And you can just twist and remove (let cool) to the bottom of the refrigerator.
Bon appetit to all!