Other Countries
| Imam Bayildi | White Bean Stew |
| Coming Soon | Coming Soon |
| Coming Soon | Coming Soon |
Submitted by: Codi from the "Ask Mehmet" section of the paper
| A Turkish co-worker in our shop mostly brings his lunch from his house. The other day, he wanted me to take a bite of his food. I did and it was quite diffrent, but extremely delicious. It was an eggplant dish. It also had an interesting name - something like "The Priest Fainted." What is that dish? | * |
| You are talking about "Imam Bayildi." It is really a very popular dish of Turkish cuisine. | * |
| As you mentioned, it is an eggplant dish. As a matter of fact, eggplant is cooked in so many diffrent ways that a skillful cook can create a diffrent eggplant dish every day of the month. You can fry, stew, boil, stuff, make salad...etc. with eggplant. | * |
| The name of this dish has a two sided story. One story is that a wife cooked this dish and when the Imam (which means 'religious leader' or 'prayer leader') tasted the food he liked it so much he fainted out of pleasure. The other side of the story though, is that when the Imam comes home and sees that his wife spent so much on olive oil for the dish he got so angry he fainted. | * |
| How to cook Imam Bayildi: | * |
| Ingredients: eight medium size eggplants, one glassful of olive oil, one medium sized onion, 10-12 cloves of garlic, a little bit of salt and two tomatoes. | * |
| Peel the eggplants and slice into four pieces from the top toward the stem. Let the stem keep the eggplant together. Wash the eggplants and place them side by side into a pan. Meanwhile, slice the onion into rings and then rub salt into the rings. Put the onion rings and garlic cloves on top of the eggplant. Then, put very thinly sliced tomatoes on top and pour the olive oil into the pan. Finally add water to cover all the ingredients and put the lid on the pan. Place the pan on medium heat and cook for 30 minutes. Let it cool down before serving. If you want you can fry the eggplant at the beginning before placing it into the pan. | * |
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Submitted by: Codi from the "Ask Mehmet" section of the paper
| Mehmet, the other day a Turkish friend invited me to lunch at the Turkish Gazino. We ate a stew with white beans. My friend said that white beans is the national food. Could you tell us about that dish please? | * |
| In fact, the national food is considered the white bean stew, rice pilaf and pickles. Very probably you have eaten the other two as well that day. Every Turk loves the white bean stew. | * |
| How to cook white bean stew: | * |
| Ingredients: one pound white beans, two medium size onions, one quarter of a pound of margarine, two medium size tomatoes, two green peppers and half a pound of meat (beef or lamb). | * |
| Put the white beans in a pan filled with water the night cooking. This way, the beans get soft and cook better in a shorter period of time. Dissolve the margarine in a pan on the fire and add the very thinly sliced onions and meat sliced in small chunks. After a while, add the sliced tomatoes and green peppers and cook until the tomatoes are dissolved. Then add the white beans into the pan and add water to cover all ingredients. Keep it on medium heat until boiling then on low heat for about 45 minutes. Now your white bean stew is ready. | * |
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