Eggplant

This version of the famous dip—an unusual one with added yogurt—is particularly delicious and creamy. Serve with pita or Lebanese bread.

These eggplants stuffed with ground meat—their name, karniyarik, means “slashed belly”—are served as a hot main dish with rice pilaf (page 193). Use a good-quality tomato juice.

One legend surrounding the name of the sauce, hünkâr beğendi, which means “Her Majesty’s delight,” places it in 1869 when the Sultan Abdul Aziz entertained Empress Eugénie (my Istanbul grandmother was named after her), wife of Napoleon III, in his white rococo palace of Beylerbey on the Asian side of the Bosphorus. The empress was so enchanted by the pale, creamy, eggplant purée that she asked for the recipe to be given to her cooks. The sultan’s cook explained that he could not pass on the recipe because he “cooked with his eyes and his nose.” In Turkey, they use mature kasar, a hard yellow cheese, or Gruyère in the sauce, but mature Cheddar can be used too. Serve it with rice pilaf (page 193).

This is a cold pilaf to serve as a first course. It has an exciting combination of ingredients and flavors, while a mix of cinnamon and all spice lend a beautiful light brown color.

Imam Bayildi is one of the most famous Turkish dishes. Conflicting stories are told about the origin of its name, which means “the Imam fainted.” Some say it came about when an Imam (Muslim priest) fainted with pleasure when it was served to him by his wife. Others believe that the Imam fainted when he heard how much of his expensive olive oil had gone into its making. It is best cooked in a saucepan, but you may find it easier in the oven. Serve it cold. Small, elongated eggplants—at most 5 1/2 inches long, each weighing about 4 to 4 1/2 ounces—are best for this dish. You will find them in Asian and Middle Eastern stores.

A very traditional meze is fried eggplants served with yogurt and tomato sauce. I like to do the same with a mix of roasted vegetables, and I serve them either hot or cold. It is the kind of thing you can do easily in large quantities for a party. It can be done a day in advance, cooking the vegetables in batches, if necessary, and reheating them, if you wish, on the day. The yogurt should be at room temperature. The tomato sauce has a sweet-and-sour flavor and is served cold.

This strongly flavored version of a very common meze originates in Georgia, where walnut trees abound. There is plenty of garlic, but it is not overpowering because it is fried. The eggplant slices can be deep-fried, but I prefer them roasted in the oven. They should be served cold, and they can be made in advance.

The Turkish people claim to have a hundred ways of preparing eggplants. For them, it is the king and queen of vegetables. This is the classic purée that is also found in all the countries around the Mediterranean with a variety of different flavorings and trimmings. Serve it as a dip with bread or with crudités such as carrot, cucumber, and celery sticks.

Yogurt softens the flavors and adds to the creamy texture of this refreshing purée.

I love this popular Moroccan salad. It is best made several hours in advance so that the flavors have time to penetrate.

An intensely flavored (but not overpowering) accompaniment for Asian-style dishes, this adds an enticing visual accent to the dinner plate as well.

This makes an excellent side dish for pasta. See the menu accompanying Farfalle with Mushrooms (page 76).

Here’s an enjoyable way to serve a modified version of eggplant Parmigiana that’s lighter than the more customary eggplant hero sandwich.

This eggplant-lover’s delight is delicious with fresh or canned tomatoes. For a tasty summer meal, serve with a bountiful tossed salad and corn on the cob.

This is a fat, stuffed vegetable sandwich that’s great for a picnic. The olive tapenade is also good spooned on bread toasts and served as an hors d’oeuvre.

This salad is wonderful served warm or at room temperature with French bread and a green salad.

This is a wonderful Greek-style one-dish meal or a side dish for a party. Roasting brings out the flavors of the vegetables. You can prepare all the vegetables except the potatoes ahead of time.

This basic, versatile recipe can be adapted to just about any vegetable depending on what you have on hand. While the oven preheats, prepare the vegetables. Serve with oven-grilled chicken breasts and steamed rice.

Here’s a soup for late summer when eggplants, tomatoes, and red peppers are luscious and ripe. Top the soup with a dollop of plain yogurt and pesto for added zip.

Serve small wedges as an appetizer or large wedges for a vegetarian main dish.

Eggplant, zucchini, sweet onions, and tomatoes all roasted together thicken by themselves to make a deeply flavored sauce for pasta. It’s a meal that’s ready in less than half an hour.

We remember falling in love with a photograph of petits farcis in an old issue of Cuisine e Vins de France We're sure that most chefs of our age who dreamed of cooking professionally since childhood feel the same when they open a vintage copy of Cuisine et Vins de France, or of Georges Blanc's De La Vigne à l'Assiette. There is not greater food era than when Michel Guérard, Bernard Loiseau, Paul Bocuse, Alain Chapel, Georges Blanc and Roger Vergé were at the top. Petits Farcis are vegetables stuffed with sausage mix, then baked and eaten lukewarm. We make them in the summer when the growers show up with pattypan squashes. What else are you supposed to do with those little squashes other than admire them? The stuffed vegetables are awesome with a mâche salad and partner perfectly with a nice rosé or pastis. Get the smallest vegetables you can find, about the size of a gold ball.

I have eaten several versions of these eggplant fritters, which are a specialty of Córdoba, and have loved them all. The combination of savory and sweet is sensational. In the town of Priego de Córdoba, which is in the mountains on the Ruta del Califato (the tourist route of old Muslim Spain), where there is an old Moorish quarter, the eggplant slices I ate were very thin and crisp and served with a dribble of honey. I learned from the chef at the restaurant Rio a new way to prevent the eggplant from absorbing too much oil, which is to soak the slices in milk, then drain them and cover them in flour.
These are best eaten as soon as they are done, but they are also very good reheated in the oven.