Dinner · 45 min · Amounts not specified
Imam bayıldı
A pile of onions, more oil than you think, eggplant until it collapses. Better the next day. The imam fainted from the oil, not the spices.
The sheet · 4 as a side · 45 min
mediumWhy tonight. A pile of onions, more oil than you think, eggplant until it collapses. Better the next day. The imam fainted from the oil, not the spices.
What it needs
Nothing confirmed on your shelf yet — this list is the whole ask.
- eggplant
- onion
- tomato
- garlic
- olive oil
Good if you have them, fine if you do not: parsley.
Method
- Halve the eggplant, score the flesh in a diamond, salt it and leave it half an hour. Rinse and dry properly.
- Fry the cut faces in more olive oil than feels reasonable, until they are deep brown and collapsing.
- Onion, garlic and tomato cooked separately into a jammy filling, seasoned hard.
- Stuff, a splash of water in the dish, and into a moderate oven for forty minutes.
- Eat it at room temperature the next day. This is one of the few dishes that is genuinely better cold, and rushing it hot is the whole mistake.
Technique coach
What the method is trying to make happen
Sequence, correction, heat and texture, equipment workarounds, scaling, and component reuse are available with this cook sheet.
An educational plan from a curated corpus. Not a nutrition, allergen, or doneness guarantee.
Cook or pour it, then edit the shelf if you emptied a bottle or used the last of something.
The technique underneath this
Going wrong while you cook it? Say what it is doing and the triage will tell you what is happening, the smallest move, and the instinct to resist.
Watch the technique behind this one
Third-party video. Opens in a new tab — nothing is embedded and nothing is fetched from a video platform until you click.
Reviewed video matched to this method, not to the cuisine. Opens in a new tab.
- Produce prepHow To Mince GarlicAmerica's Test KitchenSmashing and mincing a clove down to something that cooks evenly instead of burning in pieces.Link checked 2026-09-08
- Knife skillsHow To Dice OnionsAmerica's Test KitchenWalks through the claw grip and the two cuts that turn a whole onion into an even dice.Link checked 2026-09-08
- Produce prepThe Best Way to Mince Garlic | Serious Eats At HomeSerious EatsCompares the knife methods for garlic, including when to take it all the way to paste.Link checked 2026-09-08
Why each of these is on the list
What the ingredients are actually doing
- eggplant
- A sponge, and that is the whole problem and the whole opportunity.
- onion
- The base under most of this library.
- tomato
- Sweet, sour and savory at once, which is why it holds up so many dishes with no meat in them.
- garlic
- Burns in seconds and turns the whole dish bitter, so it almost never goes in first.
- olive oil
- Two ingredients sharing a name.
Missing one of them? The substitutions are written against those jobs rather than against a chart, so they say what each replacement costs this dish in particular.
Cooks from the same box
If you bought for this, you can already make these
Shares tomato, onion, garlic
Tomato chickpea stew
Canned tomato covers if the fresh ones are gone. Onion, garlic, oil, paprika if you have it. Chickpeas make it dinner.
Shares tomato, onion, olive oil
Tomato green beans
Greek braised beans. Cook them past snappy. Olive oil at the end.
Shares tomato, olive oil, garlic
Tomato toast
Summer path. Toast, garlic rub, ripe tomato, oil. Basil if it is green. Salt the tomato. Don't use a pale one.
Shares tomato, olive oil, onion
Greek salad
Room-temp tomato, slab of feta, onion, cucumber. Oregano. Don't drown it. Olives if the jar is open.
Next
Cook it, then tell the shelf what you used.
The ranking is only as honest as the shelf behind it. Empty the cream, and everything that leaned on cream should stop being offered.