Sultan's Delight

Well hello, blog. Long time no see. I apologize to all my loyal readers for the several month delay in posting, but I blame the working life. It's much harder to write blog entries when I'm not sitting on my couch all day every day.

Anyway, for my triumphant return, I will tell you all about the most amazing food that I have ever had a hand in making. It's called Hünkãr Begendi, which is Turkish for Sultan's delight. And delight it does. Because I am not at all creative, I choose to recreate my favorite dish from my favorite restaurant. This one is from Zaytinya and, according to the menu, it's a traditional Turkish braised lamb shank eggplant-kefalograviera purée. The lamb and it's juices sit on top of the eggplant, and you use pita bread to scoop it all up and eat it. Man, now I'm hungry.

So, part one of this dish is the eggplant puree. To make it, I got a giant eggplant (about a pound) and put it (whole, with skin on) in the oven at 425 for about 45 minutes until the skin was kinda wrinkly. I think it might have been easier to cut it up first, but I was winging it. Anyway, when the giant wrinkly eggplant cooled down a little, I peeled the skin off, cut it into chunks, and let it sit in a strainer for like 15 minutes. I read somewhere that if you don’t drain an eggplant, it will be bitter, but I’m not sure that this step did me any good because not much drained out, but at least I tried. Then I pureed the eggplant with a tablespoon or so of lemon juice. Ideally this happens in a food processor, less ideally in a 10 year old blender, but that's what I had. It was not fun and took forever and I complained about it to my mom and got a food processor for Christmas! I know this looks like nasty oatmeal, but trust me, it's delicious, even if it's a bit lumpy:
The next step was for me to make my very first rue! reaux? Whatever. 1/2 cup butter and flour, cooked for a few minutes. It started off very liquidy and I was worried that I had messed up, but then I added about a cup of warm milk and as soon as the 2 liquids combined, it got very thick! Two liquids combine to make a solid, like magic! So then I mixed the eggplant and the rue together, and grated in about a cup and a half of kasseri cheese. It was the only Greek cheese I could find at whole foods. Apparently the kind they use at zaytinya is similar to peccarino romano, but we gave the other cheese a go and it was very tasty. Lastly, I added salt and pepper to taste.

As for the lamb, NP was in charge there. He braised a shank and a leg in chicken stock with carrots, celery, onions and a jar of tomato paste. In the oven for about an hour until it was falling off the bone. Served on top of the eggplant puree, it was heaven. Mmm.