Two for the Road

We’re mainly trying to cook for ourselves while travelling, both in an effort to control our budget, but also to see what we can get our hands on in local shops and markets and try our hand at learning some new recipes. Today we found ourselves in an excellent local shop, and we filled our boots with a big, yet very reasonably priced haul (see photo below, with Matt looking very sharp after a visit to a real Turkish barber today).

On the menu for tonight is Karnıyarik: aubergine stuffed with a spiced meat sauce!

Like most recipes, we started by dicing an onion. After frying it off, then adding some mince, tomatoes, red pepper paste, parsley and chilli we had a delicious meat sauce.

Meanwhile, we roasted halved aubergines in olive oil, until tender, then scooped out their flesh, adding it into the meat sauce, simmering away.

Finally, we filled the aubergine skins (and a couple of peppers) with the meat filling and baked them for 20 mins in our handy tabletop oven.

We served up the stuffed veg with some sauteed green beans – it went down a storm!

We even have leftovers for tomorrow night – what more could you want!