Traditional turkish food

The Turkish cuisine offers a great variety of meals and desserts but one of my most favorite dishes is called karniyarik. What is a karniyarik you ask? Basically a deliciously prepared eggplant stuffed with minced meat. Roughly translated it is called the riven belly and is a classic Turkish side or main dish.

Not long ago I found a variation of this classic dish while browsing on Hünerli Bayanlar. A great blog if you are looking for good recipes and inspiring stories about traditional Turkish food and/or if you are a serious breakfast lover.

Anyways – this recipe is called etli karniyarik and uses lamb instead of ground meat. The recipe reads as follows:

1 eggplant

300 gr. lamb meat

3-4 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon cider vinegar

2 cloves of garlic

2-3 spicy red peppers

1 red pepper

1 tomato

bunch of parsley

1 tablespoon red pepper paste

1 tablespoon tomato paste

1 tablespoon sugar

125 ml water

salt

pepper

First start with the eggplant and peel of the skin. You can 1) peel the skin completely or 2) partly – as I did. Cut of the ends and let them rest in salty water for about half an hour.

During this start preparing the lamb meat. Cut it into little squared pieces and place in a bowl. Sprinkle with olive oil, cider vinegar and sliced garlic. Put the meat into your fridge and let rest for half an hour aswell.

Using a coated pan and no oil roast lamb meat. Gently stirr every now and then. When water has evapurated add sliced red pepper and cook for another couple of minutes. Add sliced tomatos and cook for 2 minutes. This takes out the dominant lamb aroma. Now add chopped parsleys, freshly grounded pepper and salt.

Now lets get back to our eggplant. Take it out of salt water and dry with help of kitchen towel.

In a deep pan heat up vegetable oil until golden. Fry eggplant.

Using a heat resistant bowl place eggplant and cut into half (or softly open with tablespoon). Sprinkle with sugar and fill with prepared meat. In a different pan heat tomato and pepper paste with water and baste eggplant generously. Cover bowl with aluminum foil and place into 200° C heated oven.

Let it cook for 10-15 minutes and serve hot with zaziki or plane joghurt.

Life is good.