Stuffed Eggplants - Karniyarik

The recipe is from "Almost Turkish Recipes" blog. I include it here for your convenience.

There  are a couple things to be careful about when you're cooking with
eggplants. Buy eggplants right before you cook and pick the firmer ones;
eggplants tend to get soft in the refrigerator. And for this dish, do  not use
huge American eggplants. Try to find cute little ones or Asian  eggplants.

Ingredients

• 1 lb eggplant, peeled in stripes lengthwise
• 1/2 ground meat
• 2 onions, cubed
• 1/2 bunch parsley, finely choppped
• 1 tomato, petite diced (for the stuffing)
• 1 tomato, sliced in half moons (for the top)
• green banana peppers, as many as eggplants
• ground pepper
• salt
• 2 tbs olive oil
• frying oil
• 1 cup hot water

Preparation

1. Peel  eggplants leaving lengthwise stripes and then put them in  salty water for 10 minutes. Dry them well and fry them as a whole in a deep pot with  canola or corn or vegetable oil, whichever you're comfortable with. (Make sure oil is really hot before you place eggplants, otherwise eggplants will soak tons of oil)
2. Once they're fried, first soak the excessive oil by resting them on a paper
   towel, and then place eggplants on an oven dish.
3. In a deep frying pan, heat olive oil. Add onions and stir for 3-4 minutes.
4. Add ground meat. Cook until ground meat lets all the juice out.
5. Add diced tomato. Stir until cooked. Turn it off.
6. Add chopped parsley, salt, and pepper. Mix well.
7. With the help of two spoons, slit eggplants into two. But leave the tops and
   bottoms attached.
8. Stuff eggplants.
9. Place a slice of half moon shaped tomato and a green pepper on top of each
   split belly eggplant.
10. Pour 1 cup of hot water on top and bake them in preheated oven at 400F until green peppers are nicely baked.

Serve with rice and yogurt.

Yogurt Soup

Ingredients

• 1 cup uncooked barley
• 1/2 lb ground beef
• 1 onion - finely diced
• 3 cup yogurt
• 2-3 tbsp flour
• water, black pepper, salt
• cilantro

Preparation

1. In a large saucepan, boil barley in 2 qt of water and set aside to cool. 
2. Meanwhile, make hazelnut sized meatballs out of ground beef, salt and pepper. (More on hazelnut sized meatballs later!) 
3. Sauté onions in some olive oil (or cooking oil of your choice) and add the meatballs and cook them thoroughly. 
4. In a mixing bowl, combine yogurt, flour and salt and pepper. In your good soup pot, combine meatballs, yogurt and barley. Cook over medium heat, frequently`stirring. 
5. Right after it boils, sprinkle with some chopped cilantro.

Gozleme-Turkish Flatbread

Ingredients

• Uncooked tortilla (30 pcs.)
• 1 package feta cheese*
• 1 lb. spinach - fresh
• 2 bunches green onion
• salt and pepper to taste**

* We used Valbreso brand feta which comes in a 1 lb. container.
** Depending on how salty your feta is, you need to be cautious when adding extra salt.

This is a semi-homemade recipe for a typical gozleme as you can see we bought the uncooked tortillas at Cosco. A traditional gozleme dough is made with flour, water and salt. As for a filling, there are quite a few options, but the most common is spinach and feta. Preparation time is minimal between 20-30 minutes and cooking time is at mist 3 minutes per gozleme. You may cut back on prep time if you use crumbled feta.

Preparation

1. First, we prepare the filling. Crumble the feta cheese if not already using the crumbled kind.
   Chop green onions and spinach and combine well with cheese. Add salt and pepper. 
2. Now that the filling is ready, you can assemble your gozleme. Lay one tortilla flat on your working surface, sprinkle with 1-2 tablespoons of filling on one half of the tortilla, then fold the other half of tortilla over the filling. 
3. Heat a large nonstick pan with 2 tbsp of olive oil over medium heat.(You need a good nonstick pan to cook the gozleme or you can use a proper sized griddle as well. I do not recommend using a cast iron pan.) 
4. Transfer a gozleme to your pan when the oil is shimmering. Cook for 1-2 minutes, turn the other side and cook for another 1-2 minutes. 
5. Put aside and repeat for every gozleme.