Cook Colorful, Feel Better - Imam Bayildi

This is a food blog and I love sharing my recipes with the world. This time I need to say a few words about how we all feel at these strange and frustrating times. Most of us are in a state of unconsciousness like you have taken stress pills or like the aftermath of an operation where you feel dizzy and can not really understand what is going around you, we want to wake up and go on with our lives but that does not happen. Since June last year nothing has been normal in this country. Many young men have been killed at fights with ISIS or PKK at our southeastern border, it almost became normal to listen to the news to hear more soldiers dying every day, than the terrorist attacks in our major cities many more young people dying, and finally the unsuccessful coup that has terrorized our minds. So many conspiracy theories flying around we are trying to fish the reasonable ones to keep our sanity. What more, in Bodrum where we are you can not recognize any unease people are still on the beaches as if nothing is happening in the country, makes you sometimes think this all is imagination. Above all no more cruise lines visiting our harbors, no tourists taking any tours or cooking courses and having no income to hope for surviving and a better future for our children brings us to the borders of depression.

Could not put myself together to write another recipe since March but here I am and think cooking and cooking colorful make us all feel much better so here it goes, a classic Turkish Recipe called Imam Bayildi with a twist ;

Ingredients ;
1 red , 1 yellow, 1 green bell pepper all sliced thinly
1 carrot sliced thinly
1 onion sliced thinly
1 dried persimmon ( you can use any dry fruit like appricots, prunes etc)
10 small eggplants
7 - 8 wallnuts
1 spoon redwine vinigar
1/2 cup olive oil to fry the eggplants
1 bowl of water with 1 lemon sliced in it and 1 table spoon salt take away the bitterness of the eggplants.

Directions ;
Take the skin of the eggplants in stripes, and make a slit as shown on the picture below, make sure you do not cut all the way you will need to make small boats to fill in the stuffing. Place all the eggplants in the bowl with lemon and salt let is stay until you prepare the stuffing.

For the stuffing put 2 spoon fulls of olive oil in the pan stir fry all the vegetables, add persimmon and walnuts and add vinigar remove from heat.
Dry the eggplants with a kitchen towel and fry them with the rest of the olive oil. Once they are fried open up their bellies as on the above picture.  Place the eggplants in a pyrex pan than fill in the stuffing we made earlier.

 Add 1/2 cup of water and bake for 25 minutes at 180 C
Serve together with other Turkish Mezze.
Bon Apetit !