For months I was waiting to cook this dish again. As much as I love my winter roots or spring greens, I am passionate about the nightshades that come out in summer. Firm eggplants with shiny skins and ripe tomatoes bursting with sweetness. After all, the whole imam bayıldı business is about excellent summer produce.
İmam Bayıldı (Stuffed Eggplant Boats)
Spiced Roasted Eggplant with Millet
I am often assumed to cook Russian dishes for my Turkish family or at least sneak in some Russian influences in our daily fare. The disappointing truth is I can’t remember cooking much Russian food here in Turkey apart from the potato fritters I prepared during the romantic stage of the relationships with my husband-to-be.
The fritters that manifested the Russian culinary ascetics were accepted and eaten for two reasons: 1) fried foods are universally lovable and 2) I was too new to the family to discourage my efforts even though Özgür’s mom did immediately suggest how I could ‘improve’ the Slavic classic, and I had neither the confidence nor the language ability to say that giving dish a Turkish touch does not equal improvement.
Gözleme with Smoked Eggplant, Goat Cheese and Mint
Watching gözleme, a flat dough parcel, being made from the scratch is not unlike witnessing a miracle. A woman sits on the floor, legs crossed, in front of the low round table that serves her as a minimalistic kitchen counter. She deftly rolls paper-thin dough yufka with oklava, a long thin stick that a novice of Turkish cooking would hardly believe to be a rolling pin. The woman rolls a small ball of dough into a 10-15cm round, then she rolls the dough on the pin and unrolls it leaving the perfectly round sheet of dough slightly larger and thinner as it was just a moment ago. And so she rolls and unrolls, rolls and unrolls until she makes an impossibly thin, round and large sheet of dough.
