Şeyh Mualla Recipe
Today we are together with another delicious gift of Antakya cuisine to humanity. Eggplant and green lentils are two ingredients I would never think of together. In fact, I was quite surprised when I first heard about seyh mualla. I know eggplant is a vegetable that can come together with many ingredients and make a delicious dish. But green lentils were one of the most distant ingredients to eggplant in my opinion. Turns out it wasn't that far away. I saw that they can even have a delicious love when they are brought together.
Of course, eggplant and lentils are not the only things that make this love so delicious. The pomegranate syrup adds a wonderful flavor to şeyh mualla. Pomegranate syrup adds a slight sourness and creates a pleasant flavor as it is cooked for a long time.
Of course, adding pomegranate syrup to dishes is not unique to Antakya cuisine. There are also good examples in Antep cuisine. If you have made dried eggplant and pepper dolma before, you can guess how pomegranate syrup adds flavor to the dishes.
For şeyh mualla, the lentils are boiled a little beforehand. This both takes the black juice of the lentils and softens the lentils slightly. In this way, the lentils are easily cooked during the cooking time of the eggplants and without requiring too much water. Like every dish cooked with little water, mostly in its own juice, seyh mualla is a flavor bomb.
Of course, the only feature of şeyh mualla is not that it is delicious and surprising. Şeyh mualla is vegan, gluten-free and besides all this, it is a very satisfying meal. But this is not the end. Since all the ingredients are put in the pot from raw, it is not necessary to wait and fry the ingredients one by one. Everything is chopped and put into the pot and cooked on their own.
So what else can a dish do for you?
Enjoy the recipe...
Ingredients
- 1 cup of green lentils,
- 3 eggplants,
- 1 onion,
- 2 cloves of garlic,
- 2 tomatoes,
- 1 tablespoon of tomato paste,
- 1 tablespoon of chili paste,
- 2 tablespoons of pomegranate syrup,
- 1 teaspoon of dried mint,
- Salt,
- 2 cups of boiling water.
Preparation
- Wash and drain the lentils and take them into a saucepan,
- Add enough water to cover and take it to the stove and simmer for 10 minutes, then strain,
- Chop the onion and take it into a bowl,
- Chop the garlic and add to onion,
- Chop the tomato into cubes and add to the bowl,
- Add lentils, tomato paste, chilli paste, salt, pomegranate syrup and mint and mix,
- Peel the eggplants and cut them into long and thick slices,
- Arrange a row of eggplants and a row of lentil mixture in a pot,
- Add the water and take it to the stove and cook it on low heat without opening the lid until it almost completely absorbs all the water,
- Serve hot or cold.
Enjoy your meal...