Recipe: Imam Bayildi made easy!

Although traditionally this delicious Turkish recipe is complicated to prepare because the final appearance of the aubergines (eggplants) is striped, through scoring of the skin, I decided to adjust the recipe so that it was a one-pot dish. The adjusted recipe tastes just as wonderful as the complicated recipe, so the Imam (and anyone else who eats it) may still faint because it tastes so good! [NB: the translation for "Imam Bayildi" is "the Imam fainted".]

This is a vegetarian dish, which can be eaten as a full meal (with rice) or in smaller portions as a side or starter.

The ingredients: 2 med/large aubergines. 1 large onion (or 3 small onions as I have used), 3 tomatoes, 2-3 garlic cloves, 1/4 cup water, juice of 1/2 lemon, large handful of chopped parsley, large handful of chopped dillweed, pinch of salt (if desired), 2/3 cup olive oil, tsp sugar.

Use some of the olive oil to cover the bottom of lidded casserole dish Chop tomatoes and aubergines, slice onions and crush garlic; add to casserole dish. Then add chopped parsley, dill, sugar, salt (if using), lemon juice, water and the rest of the olive oil to the casserole.

Cover casserole and bake at 180C for about 40 minutes. Stir the casserole at least twice during this time. Serve with lemon slices and rice; I prefer wild rice with this treat of a dish. Some warm pitta or crusty bread is also nice to have with this dish as the juices are gorgeous.

You can see how large the casserole dish is from this photo before I turned on the oven.

I meant to take a picture of the cooked meal, but forgot! Or maybe I fainted...