The Levant and Anatolia · Volume 01, The Oil Coast, the Anchovy Coast and the Court Between Them
Hünkar Beğendi
Istanbul, palace-descended
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 2 hours
- Researched
- 20 sources cited
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Smoked aubergine purée under a slow lamb stew, and the dish this chapter corrects most directly against its own popular legend.
The Eugenie legend is folklore; see the history section above.
As tradition built it
Serves 4 to 6. About 2 hours.
Ingredients
- 4 aubergines
- 40 g butter
- 40 g flour
- 400 ml milk
- a little a little kaşar or hard cheese
- to taste salt, white pepper, a squeeze of lemon
- 600 g lamb or veal, cubed, for the tas kebabı
- 1, 2 onion, tomato, for the stew
Method
- Char the aubergines whole over direct flame until the skin blisters and blackens and the flesh fully collapses.
- Scrape the smoky flesh from the skin.
- Make a light béchamel with the butter, flour and milk, stir in the aubergine flesh and a little cheese, season with salt, white pepper and lemon.
- Separately, braise the lamb slowly with onion and tomato until tender, this is the tas kebabı.
- Serve the tas kebabı over the aubergine purée.
What a modern chef changes
The direct-flame char treated as the technique that actually defines the dish.
Rung 1
Method
- Run a Big Green Egg hot and fully open, coals exposed, rather than an oven grill, for the aubergine char; this is the single step that most separates a properly füme-flavoured purée from a merely roasted one.
- Scrape the flesh as soon as it is cool enough to handle, not after it has sat, to keep as much of the smoke-infused liquid as possible rather than letting it drain away.
- Keep the béchamel genuinely light, a supporting binder for the smoke flavour, not a dish in its own right; over-thickening it buries the aubergine's own character.