This is a truly legendary dish of Turkish cuisine, and its name can be literally translated as "a priest in a swoon" or "the imam was delighted." Of course, we will talk about the dish imam bayaldy in Turkish. And we will try to cook it with you today.
Turkish dish imam bayaldy has its own mythology. Of course, why these blue, stuffed and cooked in the form of a boat, along with vegetables and a tomato, had such an authentic name, no one knows for sure. Legends say: the reason for this was the excellent taste and aroma, from which you will lick your fingers and lose your head.
Other stories tell how a certain imam was married to the daughter of an olive oil merchant (which in those days was a very expensive commodity). And the girl received as a dowry as many as twelve cans of the product. And after the wedding, for twelve days she pleased her husband, serving her favorite dish for a meal - eggplant boats with stuffing. He was delighted with the delicious food. And when on the 13th day he did not receive the adored dish, he asked his wife about what, in fact, was the matter. She admitted that all the time she cooked delicious eggplants in precious oil, which she got as a dowry and had already ended. Here the imam lost consciousness. Either from the fact that he realized how expensive this pleasure was, or from the fact that he decided that he would no longer be able to buy expensive oil and enjoy this delicious dish again.
And so the name of the dish appeared - "Imam Bayaldy". In Turkish, given the simple recipe, it is prepared easily and simply. Fortunately, the ingredients are always at hand - especially during the harvest season.
But can you and I afford such a pleasure - to cook a legendary dish of oriental cuisine? The Turkish dish imam bayaldi has quite a few cooking variations.
It can be made with minced meat, it can be done with nuts, and various cutting of the ingredients themselves is also practiced. There is also a purely vegetable recipe for this appetizer - simply delicious! Moreover, imam bayaldi can be consumed hot, as an independent dish, or it can be served cold as an appetizer. And in both cases, it will be very tasty.
To prepare an authentic dish, we need:
And also: a few cloves of garlic (if you like it spicier, you can add more), 3-4 large tablespoons of olive oil, hot pepper, a spoonful of natural tomato paste.
Let's start cooking:
There are some differences in the performance of the dish by different chefs. For example, you can cut the eggplant in half after soaking in salted water, then drying them on a towel (it will also come in handy later to remove excess oil).
You can pre-fry the blue ones in oil (they already have a characteristic crust during further cooking in the oven and do not dry out during baking).
Some housewives also use not chili, but green capsicum, not so hot (the seeds must be removed to reduce its sharpness). And in the east, when preparing imam bayalda in Turkish, a little sugar is usually added to the filling so that the sauce opens up, becomes tastier, brighter. Blue ones can also be stuffed with walnuts.
Such a tasty and healthy dish can be prepared for the winter. There is nothing difficult in this. The ingredients are all the same as in the main recipe, except, perhaps, parsley. Also, in each jar of the workpiece, you can add a spoonful of sugar and a spoonful of vinegar - so to speak, for fidelity, so as not to swell. But you can not add - everything will depend on the place chosen for storage. If you store the dish at the bottom of the refrigerator, then additional sterilization will not even be required.
Bon appetit everyone!
Imam Bayaldy is a delicious eggplant dish in Turkish cuisine, although it is also popular in a number of other countries in the Middle East. It translates as "the imam fainted." According to one version, after tasting this dish, the imam lost consciousness, either because it was so tasty, or for another reason - it is not known. Such a wonderful eggplant appetizer is a great addition to any side dish. Delicious both hot and cold.
To prepare this appetizer, let's take even eggplants, sweet peppers, garlic, tomatoes, onions, tomato paste, olive oil, sugar, salt, ground black pepper and sesame seeds.
Cut the eggplant into slices 5 mm thick, put in a bowl and sprinkle with salt to remove bitterness. Set the eggplant aside for half an hour and work on the filling.
Chop sweet pepper into small cubes.
Cut the onion into half rings. Chop the garlic.
Pour olive oil into a frying pan, heat and fry garlic and onion in it. Then add sweet pepper. Fry everything together for 7 minutes.
Remove the skin from the tomatoes and chop them into cubes, add them to the pan along with the tomato paste, add sugar, pepper and salt. Saute vegetables together for 3-5 minutes.
Put the eggplant slices on a clean baking sheet, after blotting them with napkins from excess moisture. You do not need to grease the baking sheet if it is non-stick.
Place 1 tablespoon of vegetable filling on top of each circle. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and bake the eggplant for 30-35 minutes.
Put the prepared eggplants on a dish and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Sesame seeds can be pre-fried if desired.
Another photo of the mouth-watering Turkish snack Imam Bayaldy.
Bon appetit!
Imam is cooked all over the world and with different variations. In Turkey, which is considered the birthplace of the recipe, imam bayaldi is only vegetable, vegetarian. Eggplants are stuffed whole there to make “boats” with stuffing. Or they cook it in the form of a stew: cut all the vegetables into a large cube, fry everything separately, spread it in layers with the addition of mint, cumin, tomato sauce, and then stew or bake.
Turkish-style imam bayaldi is made from a simple set of ingredients: eggplant, onion, tomato, chili and garlic. Turks do not add carrots or, say, celery. It is also a seasonal, summer dish, so it is customary to cook it with fresh tomatoes, and not with tomato paste. With spices, you also need to be careful not to interrupt the natural taste of vegetables, a lot of garlic, black pepper and salt, herbs are used, sometimes nutmeg and a little cumin are added. Eggplant appetizers are always eaten cold, so the taste is fully revealed.
Total cooking time: 60 minutes
Cooking time: 20 minutes
Yield: 2 servings
Eggplants choose as even as possible, approximately the same size. Rinse and dry. Tear off the sepals, but leave the tail - it is convenient to take it when eating the imam, so you don’t need to cut it, just peel it off the top green skin with a knife. With a sharp knife, go along the eggplant, peeling off the skin in thin strips. This partial peeling in the form of a "zebra" will not allow the eggplant to lose its shape during frying.
Heat 100 ml of vegetable oil in a wide-bottomed pan and brown the eggplants on all sides. They should become soft and almost ready, so the fire should be strong at first, and then moderate. Place the fried eggplant on a paper towel to remove excess oil.
Peel the onion, cut into thin half rings. Peel the hot pepper from the seeds and finely chop with a knife. Chop the garlic with a knife or cut into thin slices (garlic crusher is not suitable). Saute everything together in olive oil until soft. The filling will be spicy. If you do not like too spicy dishes, then use not chili, but sweet bell pepper, and for piquancy, add just a little bit of ground red pepper, adjusting the amount to your liking.
While the onions are fried, scald the tomatoes with boiling water and peel them. Remove the seeds along with the juice so that the filling does not turn out to be too watery. Cut the pulp into small cubes.
Add tomatoes, salt, pepper and sugar to the pan (it will balance the taste). Simmer for 5-7 minutes, stirring.
Add chopped parsley. Fry for another minute and remove the pan from the heat. The filling is ready.
Fried eggplants will have cooled down a bit by this time. Transfer them to an ovenproof baking dish. On each eggplant, make one deep cut along - in the middle (best in the part where the skin was cut). The incision should be deep, but not through! Open the blue ones and make an indentation with a spoon. If there are seeds, gently scoop out most of them with a teaspoon.
The result is "boats" of eggplant. Salt so that the vegetables are not bland.
Fill with filling, sprinkle with lemon juice. Pour a couple of tablespoons of water into the bottom of the mold and send it to the oven, preheated to 180-190 degrees. Bake for 20 minutes until eggplant is fully cooked.
Imam bayaldi in Turkish is ready! Serve chilled. Bon appetit!
Imam bayaldy was always cooked in our family, but I didn’t know the name, this dish was considered a festive option. Now, in order not to get confused, I will call him correctly - imam bayaldy, which means something like an imam in a swoon, although I prefer the consonant and close in meaning version - "the imam was stunned." The imam, as you know, lost consciousness, there are many reasons, from wasting precious olive oil to admiring the taste of the dish. This recipe is a Caucasian, not a Turkish version of imam bayalda, it contains cilantro and coriander, which bring a Caucasian touch to the sound of the whole symphony of aromas. If you want to cook exactly the Turkish version, then exclude sweet pepper and coriander from the recipe, leave only mint from the herbs, you can add parsley. All family recipes caucasian cuisine - .
Compound:
How to cook imam bayaldy
Stuffed with vegetables and oven-baked eggplants, imam bayaldi are incredibly tasty and fragrant, suitable for a vegan menu. Peel the vegetables - in stripes, dip the tomato in boiling water for 15 seconds and peel.
Onion, garlic, spicy and finely chopped. Cut 4 slices from the tomato for decoration, and finely chop the rest as well.
Fry eggplants for imam bayalda in a pan in hot vegetable oil on all sides and put on a paper towel to remove excess fat.
Prepare vegetable stuffing for eggplant stuffing. Saute onion and garlic in hot oil for about 5 minutes.
Add sweet and hot peppers, fry, stirring, for 5 minutes.
Put chopped tomatoes in vegetables, add salt, sugar, ground black pepper, nutmeg and coriander, stir and simmer covered for about 10 minutes.
Finely chop mint, cilantro, basil and a handful of walnuts. Leave a teaspoon of crushed nuts for decoration.
Knead the rest of the nuts into the stuffing for imam bayalda along with herbs, squeeze and add lemon juice, stir.
Vegetable filling for imam bayalda is ready. Lubricate the baking dish with oil, turn on the oven at 180 degrees. Put the eggplants in a baking dish, cut along not completely and open in the form of boats.
Stuff the eggplants with vegetable stuffing, sprinkle with the left nuts.
Garnish the vegetable-stuffed eggplants with the leftover tomato slices.
Bake imam bayaldy at a temperature of 180 degrees until cooked (about 30-40 minutes).
The imam had something to faint from - the aromas in the kitchen are stunning.
Serve imam bayaldy warm as a second course or as a cold appetizer, better the next day, the dish should be infused.
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Bon appetit!
"Delighted Imam" is a traditional oriental dish, which is eggplant boats stuffed with vegetables. The recipe for "Imam Bayaldy" was invented by representatives of the Turkic peoples. However, the eggplant appetizer has taken root remarkably in the Armenian folk cuisine. How to cook "Imam Bayaldy" in Armenian? And is it possible to roll eggplant boats with vegetables for the winter?
How to cook "Imam Bayaldy" in Armenian: recipes in a slow cooker and for the winter
Ingredients
eggplant 4 pieces)
Necessary:
Cut 6 kg of eggplant into rings or "tongues" and immerse in salted water for 40 minutes, then:
Recipes with a photo of an oriental dish may come across different, since there are also Turkish and Greek versions of this appetizer. The Armenian "Imam Bayaldy" will be more to the taste of people who watch their figure, because it only contains vegetables.