Best Imam Bayildi - Greek Eggplant in tomato and mint sauce
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- Опубликовано: 3 окт 2024
- Imam Bayildi is an excellent vegetable side dish. It certainly shows the Ottoman influence over Greek cuisine. This is a dish with a legend behind it... google it for a fun look at this story. Excellent served hot, warm, or even at room temperature.
Ingredients:
2 lg eggplant
1/2-1 6 oz (157) ml can of tomato paste
1 lg onion
2 sprigs of mint - basil is another option
3 cloves garlic
salt & pepper, to taste
olive oil for frying and cooking
water, as needed
Made the recipe! It was good 👍 😋
I am so glad you liked it!! It is one of my favourite ways to have eggplant. Thank you very much for the comment!! :)
My mom always used both spearmint and parsley for the filling. Plus green bell pepper and one large tomato diced.
Again, sorry for the lateness - no notification.
Sounds like your mom was making a different dish than my moms, since I see in the other comment that she stuffed her eggplant. That is not this dish, however. Mom did a stuffed eggplant too, but we call those gemista ie: stuffed. No bell pepper or parsley in mom's version... and she did do it with fresh tomato for the sauce when they were ripe but I prefer the richness of the tomato paste and it is available all year round.
Lovely recipe, thanks. X
One of my faves!! :)
Outstanding video. Thx. Actually I'm amazed at so few comments. I guess everyone is too busy eating Imam Bayildi.
Hi Johnny... thank you for the kind words.... and the funny... hahaha...
Thanks again!!! :)
All those eggplants didn't fit one skillet, so after frying, I put them in a baking dish, poured the sauce over them, covered the baking dish with foul and baked for 20 min. It's not beautiful, but it's really delicious! Thank you!
Hi Helen! Thank you for the comment. I agree, not the prettiest of dishes but sure is tasty. That was smart, baking them off in a bigger dish. I am glad you enjoyed the recipe!!
There is no way mama told you to burnt it🥴
Correct... mama did not tell me to burn it... and I didn't burn it. Eggplant tastes best when dark brown, if you ask me. Everyone who has tried this or my moussaka, again where I like my eggplant dark, have raved about them. If you don't like yours that dark, that is the nice thing about cooking...you can make it the way you like. I prefer my eggplant well done because the flavour is so much richer.
Kali Orexi!! :)
Man that’s Turkish
And Greece was Greek before the Turks 'borrowed' it for 400 years. The Greeks 'borrowing' Turkish recipes is the MINIMUM that is owed to them....no??
My mo cut her eggplant in halftop to bottom and then cut each half into quatyrtds. fry them skin side down first then the cut sides. and set aside to cook one the filling is done cooking she would split each piece darefully so as not to cut through the skin. then stuff each piece with a tablesppon of four of the filling. The eggplant pieces she placed in a baking tray and bake for a half hour at 350F. She sould sreave it with pilaf and a green saladm abd some pita bread to dip into the sauce.
Again, sorry for the lateness.... yes... it seems your mom was not making this dish, but a stuffed eggplant dish... something my mom would call gemista...but with a meat filling. Regional variations of the same name, perhaps. But since this channel is a tribute to my mom's Greek cuisine, the way she cooked it... I present HER versions here.
Thank you for the comments.... :)
Yuum gonna make it
I am so sorry Khadijah.... I never received a notification of your comment... :(
I hope you tried the recipe and you liked it as much as I do!!
This version looks delicious!
Hi Mari... thank you very much for the compliment... I hope you try it!!
so tasty! what do you traditionaly serve it with ? just bread or some other sidedish like rice ?
Hi Rinanorich... This would be one dish mom would put on the table... so a side-dish of its own, really. Bread was ALWAYS on the table...haha.. most Greek tables, at least of my mom's time, would be a meat, grilled, roasted, or cooked in sauce, with at least one vegetable dish, such as this eggplant dish, olives, cheese, pickled vegetables or cured meats or fish...and lots of bread to go with all of that. As a kid, I loved the flavour of the sauce, so would dip bread in it, but the texture of the eggplant was too much for me, so never ate that until I got older. Still love to dip bread into it, that's for sure... hehehe
Thank you for the kind words... :)
@@MomsGreekKitchen all of the food sound simply amazing 😍 would love to try a full greek lunch sometimes 😊 i will check your other recipes for the inspiration, thank you!
@@rinanorich6322 Please do... and thank you again...
It is not a Greek recipe, it’s a Turkish recipe which we Greeks adopted.
Thank you for the comment, but if I am not mistaken, I SAY that it is a Turkish recipe and even detail the legend of where it gets its name. Did you not watch the video?
We adopted/perfected many recipes of our Turkish oppressors... 400 years... you would think us 'borrowing' their cuisine is at least a small part in exchange for being oppressed, no?
The water steams the onion instead of caramelizing them. You want them to become transluscent.
dice the bell pepper. use black pepper to season, and use a little salt.
The water does steam the onions, preventing burning when you saute them later on. Gives them time to caramelize nicely without a chance of burning. At least, that is what I think the reason for the water is. And NO bell pepper in mom's version... and there is salt and pepper in the recipe, if you check again... thanks for the comments. :)
mouthwatering
i love Eggplant.Very good sharing like 2 full watch..
Me too... love this recipe!! The combination of flavours is very good, in my opinion. :)
NOT Greek! The name itself is Turkish. Imam is a Muslim clergy and Bayıldı means fainted (from pleasure in this case, swooning is a good description).
Thanks for the comment.... and yes, I know it is not Greek, per se, but a lot of the food of that area is intermingled, as it would be with 400 years of Ottoman rule over Greece... much of Greek food is Turkish influenced... this is one of those. This is what my mom called it and how she made it. This channel is a tribute to her.
We dont care most of turkish food are influenced by greek and middle eastern (syrian and lebanese) mongols didnt have cuisine or traditions 😂
That looks amazing!
Hi Michele.... thank you for the kind words... it tastes even better.... do try it and let me know what you think.. It's an awesome dish!!
@@MomsGreekKitchen I tried a variation tonight with olives & capers, but the flavors were so incredibly strong, I couldn’t eat it. Tomorrow, I’ll add some chicken breasts & some stock to it. We’ll see. I cooked all day 🥲 I roasted the garlic, sautéed the onion, did the eggplant just like you did & added some fried mushrooms. It seemed like it would be perfect, but it was so flavorful, I could only eat a few bites. I’ll let you know how it tastes tomorrow after I tone it down a bit. Thanks for getting back to me 😊
@@GreenWitch1 Mom's recipe is not overpowering... olives and capers would totally change the delicate balance of flavours in mom's dish.. I wish you luck with trying to modify the recipe you made... all mom's recipe needs is some great bread to dip in it... nothing else is missing or needed. Good luck!! ;^)
@@MomsGreekKitchen Yep! I made it too salty for sure, but the flavors were so overpowering, I couldn’t eat but a few bites. My bad. I tried mixing a couple of recipes together. I’ll fix it & then make another attempt next week. You’re the best!
My mom always rinses the salted eggplant in col running water quickly and patted them dry with a kitchen towel nefore drying in olive oil, staarting with skin side down. for 10 minutes then the cut sides for 5 minutes each. The skins should turn brown and the cut sides should also form a brown crust. Use plenty of olive oil. The egg plant should become warm butter soft, or like brie cheese soft.
I am so sorry for the late reply.... I did not get a notification for this comment....
Thanks for the information of your mom's version. Interesting to see who the same dish, at least in name, can have so many variations.
I have noticed that female eggplant have 3 times the seeds of male eggplant.
Thank you for the comment. I have not noticed this... could be where I am located and the eggplant maybe picked underripe but I have checked both male and female eggplants and they don't seem much different, but that is just my experience... thanks again for the info and comment. :)
My grandmother was Armenian and she spoke turkish and it is spelled Imam Bialdi but is pronounced Imam Bindy. I hope that helps. :)
Oh?! Interesting... bindy?? Not bialdi... how can it be pronounced so differently from the spelling... hahahaha...
Thank you!!
@@MomsGreekKitchen Have been to Greece several times. My relatives rarely say both words. Usually they just say Imam. Everyone knows what they mean.
@@johnnycee888 That's interesting... language does change, doesn't it...
You said that was in Greece where the language is constantly changing, as all languages do... but in the diaspora, the traditions tend to stay more stagnant. Case in point, I have heard from quite a few Greece-living Greeks who say my mom's version of a recipe is NOT traditional... what they don't realize is that the recipe in GREECE has gone through changes... whereas mom has made hers the way she always did while living in Greece... and then have other diaspora Greeks confirm that their moms made the recipe the same or very close to mom's version. It was an interesting and fun discovery for me....
Imam bayildiii
I'm sorry... I do not understand your comment. Please clarify. Thank you.