easy eggplant (aubergine) dip or patlıcan ezme

Many of us don’t have the luxury and convenience of having gas cooking facility in our kitchens. And that on its own, makes things a little complicated because if you don’t have gas then you don’t have total heat control which is really important in cooking. I mean, ask any chef; they all prefer gas.

The other problem with not having gas is no gas, no smoked eggplant –also known as aubergine. So how are we going to make babaganoush or any other meze which uses smoked eggplant then? Maybe on a barbeque? Still, you may not have the weather to go outside and smoke your eggplant (aubergine), come back inside and carry on cooking. Well, if that’s your reality like it is mine then I have the second-best thing to smoked eggplant (aubergine) for you.

Recipe Notes:
• Eggplant (aubergine) is an interesting vegetable: you cannot boil it or steam it; it gets mushy. However, it responds well to baking, stewing, smoking and deep frying. Since smoking is out of the question for me and baking is a drier method which doesn’t work in a meze situation—neither does stewing here—I’ll take deep frying method, thank you very much.
• Eggplant can be very bitter. To get rid of its bitterness, soak the eggplant chunks in salted water for at least 30 minutes—the longer the better. Salt will draw out the bitter juice.
• You will also need to be careful with deep frying eggplant as it transforms itself into an oil-loving sponge if you’re not careful. To avoid that, sprinkle the eggplants with salt just before deep frying. This’ll stop them from drinking all your frying oil.

Here’s the recipe for Easy Eggplant (Aubergine) Dip or Patlıcan Ezme:

Easy Eggplant (Aubergine) Dip or Patlıcan Ezme was published in Istanbul Travelogue website some years ago. Nihan (the owner of Istanbul Travelogue) and I collaborated on this article and I was her guest blogger. You can read it here.