<em>It's your lucky day.  Today, I am introducing a new regular piece to my blog: How-to-Tuesdays.  Here I will give you a run down on how to do something new--related to my life in and around Bulgaria. </em>

While in Istanbul last week my friend Robyn and I ate a lot of really great food from the quick lunches of a doner kebap and a fried fish sandwich on the waterfront to dinners that included a smattering of mezes, the manti (more or less Turkish ravioli topped with yougart and butter sauce) and pide both from Gani Gani Sark Sofrasi (Taksim Kuyu 11) and even a traditional meal at the popular meyhana Refik (Sofyali Sokak no. 6/8 in the popular Beyoglu district).

At Refik, a well placed smile or two on my part lead us to somehow getting a table in the packed restaurant while others were being turned away (Robyn of course will swear that it's my blond hair but I don't know about that).  Here we had a selection of mezes and raki.  The mezes were fresh and delicious and included roasted red peppers, a swiss chard and yogurt dish, eggplant and tomatoes and these were served with a big basket of fresh bread.  You really can't go wrong with that and we split a main dish which was an assortment of grilled meat.  It was exactly the right balance of flavors and textures.

But the dish that I had and was dying to try my hand at making at home was a roasted aubergine that I had a hookah cafe around the corner from our hotel.  <!--more-->The dish was called imam bayildi.  Basically it's a roasted eggplant that is roasted with a healthy amount of olive oil and filled with chopped tomatoes, onions and garlic topped with white cheese.  It was served to me with a basket of bread but I would have been equally happy to eat it with a fork.

So I made this dish tonight:

[caption id="attachment_846" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="My Aubergine Dish: Imam Bayildi "]<img class="size-medium wp-image-846" title="Me and Aubergines " src="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/dsc07125.jpg?w=225" alt="My Aubergine Dish: Imam Bayildi " width="225" height="300" />[/caption]

I took three small aubergines (they were not more than a 2 inches around and maybe 6-8 inches long), washed them and sliced them open.  I put them in a pan lined with tin foil (for easy clean up). Then I chopped up one large tomato (and upon tasting it I added a little salt.  It's really not tomato season here right now).  I spread the chopped up tomato evenly among the aubergines.  Then I sliced very thinly half an onion and two heads of garlic.  I put these on the tomatoes.

Before popping this mix into my oven which I'd heated to about 350 degrees Fahrenheit, I poured olive oil over the dressed up aubergines.  Then I let the whole thing bake/roast for about 45 minutes.  You really want the aubergine to be close to melting in their skins.  Think: soft-soft.

This way the flavors will come together and it will be easy to convey to your mouth on a slice of bread.  Thus I'd roast the aubergines at a lower temperature for longer rather than try to speed the process along with a higher temperature.  At the very end, I'd add a generous amount of white cheese.  Tonight I used kashkaval but any semi-hard white cheese would work and (gasp) I think mozzarella would be pretty darn good on it in a pinch.

All in all, I'd rate this recipe as so easy to make at home that anyone who knows how to use a knife and turn on an oven could make this dish.  I'd like to follow this up by saying this is a dish that is also super flavorful and probably for the rest of my life this dish will taste like Istanbul to me.  The only that would make my experience more authentic would be if I was drinking tea and Turkish men were obviously and shamelessly checking me out.