Karnıyarık is the hard working older sister to lazy little sister Moussaka,
because considerably more effort and refinement goes into putting together this eggplant dish which is "the split stomach" in Turkish. Karnıyarık should always be eaten with plain white Turkish pilaf,
for which you can find a pretty decent recipe here.
The image that I have put on the top of this post is not strictly accurate. The genuine article should not have a melted cheese topping, although one des come across it from time to time. Real Karnıyarık looks like the images below, from which you can see a properly cooked Karnıyarık is not too photogenic. But, while my blogger self wanted to show the real thing, exactly how it looks, when it came to choosing the image my graphic designer self took over and I ended up using a not quite correct image for the simple reason that it looked better. :-D
INGREDIENTS
| For eggplants:
- 5 eggplants
- 5 tablespoons olive oil
Filling:
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 small onion, finely chopped
- 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
- 200g/ 7oz ground beef
- ¼ cup finely chopped green pepper
| | - ½ cup finely chopped tomatoes
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon black pepper
- ½ cup parsley, finely chopped
Sauce:
- 1 and ½ cups hot water
- 2 tablespoon tomato paste
|
INSTRUCTIONS
Eggplants:
- Preheat the oven to 200C/400F.
- Peel the eggplants lengthwise, leaving some stripes of the skin. Using a knife, make a slit on each eggplant but don’t cut it all. Don’t remove the stems.
- Soak the eggplants in salted water for about 15 minutes. Gently squeeze them and pat dry with a paper towel.
- Place the eggplants on an oven grill or on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Brush the eggplants with olive oil, about 1 tablespoon olive oil for each. Bake them until tender, for 30 minutes.
Filling:
- Prepare the filling when you put the eggplants in the oven. Heat olive oil in a pan. Cook onions until translucent. Add in garlic and then ground beef. Stir well and press on the ground beef so that there won’t be any blocks left.
- Then cover the pan and let it release its juice first and then absorb most of it.
- Now add in chopped peppers and tomatoes. Let them cook for 5 minutes over low heat.
- Remove from heat and add in chopped parsley.
Assemble:
- Now remove the eggplants from the oven. Make some space for the filling in each eggplant by pushing the edges of the slit using a spoon. Make a boat shape.
- Stuff the eggplants with the filling and place them in a baking pan.
- Preheat the oven to 200C/400F.
- Mix water and tomato paste well.
- Pour it all over the stuffed eggplants.
- Bake for 20 minutes.
- Remove from the oven and garnish with chopped parsley before serving.
Shamelessly filched from:
Thank you Give Recipe! :-)
Images: Unsplash and Freepik.
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