In the first couple of years that Mr NQN and I first started going out we didn’t entertain much at all. This was because there was no dining table to speak of and any guests had to huddle around a coffee table which really isn’t ideal if people are eating with forks and knives. Mr NQN saw no need to buy a dining table as he was living by himself and all meals were eaten in front of a glowing computer screen. So we never had people over because nobody wants to sit at a table looking like the hunchback of Notre Dame playing tea party.
Until one year I decided that I wanted to start cooking. And if you cook for pleasure then you’ll realise that slowly, you want to spread this activity among friends and family. Slowly we invited people over. We started off with family members, they were easiest and less critical. I started with Mr NQN’s sister and boyfriend who were very non critical when it comes to food.
I decided to make a caponata, an eggplant or aubergine dish from somewhere, it might have even been a Nigella Lawson cookbook. I had never cooked with eggplant before so I didn’t know anything about using salt to take out the eggplant’s bitterness. I was so busy fluttering around that I sat down last and they and Mr NQN had already started eating. I took a bite and the caponata had that odd taste to it, what I now know is the bitter liquid that you should draw out using salt, for the larger eggplants.
I looked around alarmed but everyone else appeared to be eating it without comment or alarm. Thankfully they didn’t notice or were too polite to comment about the bitter taste of the eggplant. I didn’t dare ask and we swiftly moved on to the main course (which I can’t remember to be honest) and the dessert, a chocolate and lime cheesecake which they thankfully loved so much I think it obliterated any sort of hesitations they might have had about the caponata.
Salting and draining the eggplant
Ever since then I always salt the large eggplants while the smaller ones of Japanese eggplants don’t really need it. It has become one of my favourite vegetables as I love the melty texture that you can get from eggplant when cooked at length. When we drove down the Great Ocean Road recently we had an Imam Bayildi at a restaurant and I was reminded how much I love this dish. The eggplant is hollowed out and then filled with a melting mix of eggplant cubes and vegetables and then baked for maximum gooey softness.
This is a version of the Turkish dish Imam Bayildi which translated means “The Imam fainted” as the imam or priest was said to be so impressed when he first tried it. The trickiest part of this dish was removing the eggplant flesh from the eggplant halves while leaving the skin intact. After that it was a matter of sauteeing the vegetables and then baking it in the oven. This version adds some cheese and toasted pine nuts to it although you can keep it traditional by omitting these. It is a dish that I find gloriously comforting with the colours and the glistening eggplant halves.
So tell me Dear Reader, do you invite people over often? And what did you cook at your first dinner?
And here is today’s Wallpaper Wednesday of the Stuffed Eggplant! 
xxx
Stuffed Eggplant (Imam Bayildi)
Serves 6 as a side dish or entree
- 3 medium sized eggplants, halved
- Salt for drawing out any bitterness
- 6-8 tablespoons oil
- 1 onion, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, chopped
- 2 red capsicums (I used one red and one orange), diced
- 3 tomatoes, diced
- 3 tablespoons pine nuts, toasted
- 1/2 cup soft feta cheese
- 1/2 lemon
- 1/4 cup chopped parsley (plus a little extra at end)
- 2 teaspoons white sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- salt and pepper to taste
1. First remove the flesh from the eggplant using a sharp knife being sure not to cut through the skin. I found it easiest to cut around the edge of the eggplant and then make a few vertical cuts and then use a knife to remove the flesh. Chop the eggplant flesh into small cubes and place it in a colander. Repeat with the remaining five halves of eggplant. Sprinkle salt over the chopped cubes of eggplant and over the eggplant skins and leave for 30 minutes to draw any bitterness.
2. Preheat the oven to 180c/350F and line a baking tray with parchment. Fill a large saucepan with water until simmering. While it is heating up, dice the onions, garlic, capsicums and tomatoes. Toast the pine nuts in the oven for 5 minutes until golden.
3. Rinse the eggplant skins and the cubed eggplant. In the saucepan, simmer the eggplant skins until they turn from purple to brown-about five minutes. Remove and drain.
4. Rinse out the saucepan and dry it and then put it on medium to high heat. Add 1 tablespoon of oil and fry the onion and garlic until soft. Then add some more oil and fry the capsicum, tomatoes and drained eggplant cubes and saute until soft, about 10-15 minutes. Eggplants can really absorb a lot of oil so it’s up to you how much you want to use (you can also use a couple of tablespoons of water if you want to keep it low fat). Add pine nuts, feta, lemon juice, parsley, sugar, cinnamon and salt and pepper to taste.
5. Place the eggplant skins on the lined baking tray and brush with oil. Fill with the vegetable mixture and top with more cheese if you want. Drizzle some more oil on top and around the sides of the eggplant and bake for 35-40 minutes until very soft. Serve with extra parsley.
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72 Comments | Add your own
Oh! I never had stuffed eggplants…looks great and love the colors of this dish. Must taste really good with pine nuts and feta cheese.
Have a great week Lorraine
That is a wonderful dish! Turkish food is so scrumptious.
Cheers,
Rosa
That dish looks amazing, Lorraine, I adore the colours. I too love the texture of slow cooked egg plants.
What did I cook when I entertained the first time? I had a professor over for dinner and although I cannot recall what the main course was, I did serve a traditional Hungarian appetizer course of Sour Cherry Soup http://kitcheninspirations.wordpress.com/2011/12/24/hungarian-sour-cherry-soup/. My professor exclaimed with glee, ‘Oh dessert to start”!
I rarely invite people over for meals because my kitchen cannot cope with the capacity of food. But if I do, i put the most effort in it, to ensure that my guests are happy. Usually, I make really tricky dishes that take time so that their experience will be worth while.
What an interesting recipe! I’ve never seen a dish where the eggplant is hollowed out before cooking! And you have great family – I think they’re the harshest critics of all when it comes to my cooking!
I’m a huge eggplant lover desipte it gives me allergic reaction when I eat too much. But that doesn’t matter when these stuffed eggplants are in front of me! DROOL. This looks so good! The flavor is new to me, and very interested to trying it out.
The stuffed eggplant looks fantastic! I’ve only stuffed peppers and mushrooms, but why not eggplant. I’m definitely going to try this. Thanks Lorraine.
Eggplant is so silky smooth and delicious, I just love this recipe!
The first dinner I cooked for my hubby was a chicken galentine stuffed with apricots and pine nuts, all made from scratch. I was 15 and so proud of myself, it must have impressed him on some level as we’ve been together ever since!
If I knew you were going to give us this recipe, I could have saved myself heaps of time googling it the other day and watching youtube!
Yours looks delicious and vibrant, the others involved a LOT of oil.
I don’t entertain much, although I love to cook and these days usually involves a slow cooked lamb and assorted sides. There’s usually a couple of fussy, no nonsense eaters in my group, which stifles me a bit! hahaha
Eggplant, I remember when I was a kid and my mother cooked it I just hated it. Now years after, I discovered that eggplant when is well cooked is delicious, but don’t my mother she didn’t know how to cook it please.
These are lovely photo’s of a delicious dish. My very first attempts at cooking for others were in a share house and probably involved rice or lentils – I really can’t quite remember.
This is my favourite dish if I eat at a Turkish restaurant. I never have people round but would love to if I had a bigger place and kitchen.
Morning NQN.. in relation to yesterdays post, Im munching a macadamia anzac biscuit with my cuppatea before going to our villages march to watch my daughter sing with her school choir.
Lest We Forget
I love eggplant too. Love to cook, and in a former life, loved dinner parties, but lost my confidence. If you are told you are crap over and over again, you start to believe it.
Only recently, I began cooking and having people over again, and just last night had a couple of friends over for Japanese. They complemented me on how calm I was (the biggest complement of all!) and how yummy the food was). Sushi (which I cheated with), and a Japanese curry (which I made from scratch). There was chocolate cake which the kids and I made from scratch the night before, but as we were all watching our weight, we went without. But we had lots of laughs. And the food was actually lovely. Turns out I am not a crap cook after all.
This looks devine! I have never had this dish before but would be happy to bcome acquainted with it. At my first dinner party, I served cream cheese and asparagus sandwiches for starters (which no-one seemed to want!), roast chicken with vegetables and cherry cheesecake.
Imam Bayildi is one of my absolute favorite dishes–and yours looks lovely. Great photos.
I honestly don’t remember my first dinner party because I really loved cooking from an early, early age–and it’s just been too long! But I do remember having a similar situation with bitter eggplant and guests, before I learned what to do.
I love eggplant but it doesn’t love me unfortunately
This looks so yummy.
Gorgeous picks Lo-gella! Im still coming around to eggplant…baby steps. We rarely have people over, I dont even know why. My first ever ‘grown up’ dinner party I made tuna (tinned) pasta. Classy. Actually I still make it to this day, its yum.
Such a clever dish. They look really colourful and tasty – no wonder you made a wallpaper out if them.
We went to cooking school in Turkey and learnt how to make these. They’re fabulous, although we did make them differently. By taking strips off the outside, roasting them, and then in one of the hollows, pressing all the flesh into the centre and then stuffing and roasting them.
Such a great dish to impress visitors and so easy to whip up as well.
Up until recently, we used to do a dinner with our friends every Sunday night. We took turns to cook and everyone got a bit competitive. The first thing I cooked there was a green curry, the last thing I made was smoked duck ravioli. How we get so adventurous…
LOL Anything named “the Imam fainted” is good enough for me. I love eggplant too and this dish looks fantastic.
This looks delicious Lorraine!
I love having people over for food, anytime. If something is a big fail, i try to laugh it off, but mostly i get very upset. Thats why i try to make a spectacular dessert, so at least they are left with a happy finish!
Thanks for reminding me about delicious Imam Bayildi, several years ago Turkish neighbors made it for a holiday diner which I was a guest at, I was sold on the recipe and I now make it about three times a year. In turn I introduced the family to my Sicilian mother’s caponata (“ugabbunadda” in dialect)… I think the eggplant was invented in the heavens just for these two recipes.
That looks much better than my stuffed eggplant.
I’ve never seen this dish before, the colour looks gorgeous. Will definitely give this a try, thanks Lorraine.
These look so beautiful I want to eat one now! It’s one of those dishes that make you forget that there isn’t any meat in it! : D
I love having people over to dinner. I’d have them at least once a week if I didn’t have to clean up!
We do invite people over often but I can’t remember what I first cooked. I absolutely love eggplant it’s my favourite vegetable(fruit) and I could honestly eat it everyday! Yum
Lorraine, this sounds delicious!
I have loved eggplant forever it seems and cooked the ‘Fainting Imam’ in quite a few variations. Adore stuffed eggplant and have collected quite a number of recipes. Love it as my main meal sitting atop some quinoa or barley with a small mid-Eastern side salad
! And have just set your photo as my newest computer background – looks lovely! Actually unless an eggplant looks ancient I don’t bother to degorge – perhaps my palate likes a slight bitterness? I adore cooking for friends, but don’t want to look back at my first dinner party. Thought I was so smart making a curry. Didn’t know what I was doing, did I 
! Used curry powder not individual spices, a very basic then-OZ recipe and accompaniments we would not dream serving these days! Unfortunately my guests included some older, cluey and not very diplomatic visitors who promptly invited us back to their home to show how it was properly done 
! Took me awhile to get back to the East in my entertaining!!
(I couldnt see them either – I think its fixed now. You can delete this comment)
I also agree, a great recipe. My mum sometimes brings out the stuffed eggplant with either meat or rice and varies other ingredients. Delicious or entree or as a main for a vegetarian, which we have a couple in our family.
The first time I had guests over for a meal, they cooked, lol. We had a roast on the webber and I made a few salads to go with it. Ahh, memories of long ago. I enjoy cooking for people, for me it’s a compliment seeing them enjoying my cooking.
Such a colourful and healthy dish! It makes me want to make more vegetable based dishes.
PERFECT suggestion to inspire me to make TODAY!
WHOO HOO, in a special way!
We entertain on a regular basis creating unique themes, TRUE!
Mini bite portions of all world cuisines, multiple dishes…a food taster’s dream… which we VERY E-X-C-I-T-E-D-L-Y and passionately plan each and every step of the way too!
Those look so pretty and so many beautiful colours. I’ve had my share of dinner party disasters too but hey, at least we’re hospitable and invite people over! xx
Lovely meal Lorraine! I am lazy to remove the flesh from the eggplants, so I just mix all other vegetables and make a slide on the eggplant’s halves and top it with stuffing.
Your work looks amazingly beautiful and delicious! What was my first meal for the crowd of guests? Probably. pan fried potatoes at the college dorm. Are you collecting the information for your next book/article by asking us all this interesting questions?! 
I have been so hungry lately for eggplant. I grew up on it. It’s tricky though and the salt doesn’t just take the bitterness, it takes the moisture and sponginess and allows you to cook it with less oil. I’m pinning this one to make this week. I hope I faint.
Oh, I love Imam Bayildi. I haven’t made it in so long though. I also love caponata especially Yotam Ottolenghi’s version.
I don’t really have people for dinner any more. I don’t really remember what the first thing I made was but my most successful was Jamie Oliver’s Hamilton Squash. That was probably 8 years ago now and my friend’s husband still talks about it.
We didn’t get our first dining room table until we had been together for 9 years so I can relate to what you went through. I love aubergine so will try this when we get back from Scotland
I love eggplant. This fits in wonderfully with our current part-time vegetarian diet perfectly. And gluten free too – sweeet!
Mmmm, I love this dish. We cook it quite often in Bulgaria, as we are next to Greece and Turkey, lots of our dishes are highly influenced by those two countries. Haven’t cooked it for a long time though & would love to try your version.
Your photos are amazing, Loraine! This is not a very pleasing to the eye type of dish, but yours look just devine!
Your Imam Bayildi looks absolutely delicious – I’ve made a similar version from Frances Mayes that I love.
What a gorgeous, gorgeous dish, Lorraine! And hey, I’d be willing to have dinner with the Hunchback as Notre Dame as long as it was the Disney version with singing involved
YUM! Can’t wait to make these. I love eggplant, my usual favourite is pasta alla norma (Sicilian dish) but this looks like something that will be a new favourite in our house. I love this blog!
Ooh! With the gruesomely hot weather we’ve been having of late (Manila’s currently in the throes of a heatwave!), this would make the perfect summer’s night supper.
I love the meaning behind this dish – we used to serve it in the restaurant I worked in and people would always smile when I explained that the imam fell over in delight when trying it!
These look absolutely wonderful. I’m not a great fan of aubergine (eggplant) as it gets so mushy, but this looks really delicious. Like you I didn’t really invite people for dinner until I had a dining table. Bizarrely I chose the owners of the local wine bar and restaurant as my first guests! I don’t suppose I need to point out that I’d spent a fair bit of time in the wine bar to become that friendly with the owners! it was a very fun night and the first of many. GG
This looks gorgeous! We ate eggplant this lunch and this makes me wish, we ate this!
I remember our first dinner party, we only had two armchairs and a small four-seater table, and over a dozen people showed up. We ended up having to creatively use pillows and bean-bags, lol. Lovely recipe!
I adore aubergines and this looks really fab!
Am glad that first dinner party went well (despite not salting the eggplant) so that we have your blog to read now!
I’ve ‘stuffed’ zucchinis but never down it with eggplants, yum! Feta and pine nuts are staples in my diet which makes this recipe sound even better, can’t wait to try it.
I’m pretty sure my first ever ‘dinner party’ during Uni was Lemon Chicken & rice, which I made using a jar of Chicken tonight! Very sophisticated.
E doesn’t like eggplant so I am wary of it and know it has to be excellent to impress – don’t want to feed his paranoia! But I agree that it is a fantastic vegie. I thought I had read that some of the bitterness had been bred out of eggplants so you don’t always need to salt it. But it is a terrible feeling to serve food that you feel is sub-par – am sure you serve amazing food these days!
This looks quite delicious MrsNQN. vego, gluten free and tasty
Wow, I had always thought that eggplant was salted and left for a ridiculously long time so that there was less moisture to spit at you when frying it! Maybe that’s just an added perk of salting it? I love a good dinner party and I generally like it to follow a theme – I think this has inspired me to whip up a turkish feast this weekend!
Love the addition of feta and pinenuts to this traditional dish, so healthy yet delicious!
I love eggplant and the stuffed variety just calls out to me. I love the hint of cinnamon mixed with the crunch of nuts and peppers. Another great recipe, L.
i love two things about eggplant–its flavor and the color we’ve named after it!
I love entertaining (well, having folks over for dinner), but since we moved far from family and friends, it’s been challenging to do so. This needs to change tho, because I make far to much food for just the two of us
Wow this look delicious! You must know I have a weakness for eggplants and these look delicious!
I love this idea. Great flavour combinations with the capsicum, feta and pinenuts. Aubergine is still in season too – so well timed with this tasty recipe. Entertaining is great, when you have time to prepare. Sadly now, so many people have the quick-fix dinners and the Friday evening get together tends to evolve around finger food, pre packaged dips, crackers, nuts, fresh sliced vegetables and generally ‘quick no fuss food’ It is becoming harder to find like-minded foodies who love to cook and entertain. Maybe we could use a facebook for foodies…. I would rather entertain at home then eat in restaurants.
I love this dish and the name!
Delicious recipe Lorraine. I love eggplants, will have to try this recipe as a nice change from the traditional “little shoes” we often make. My first attempt at entertaining with mr k came in the form of a couple spicy chicken tagines and fresh salads! The meal worked really well but the clean up was a nightmare!!
I love eggplant – especially served the Japanese way with miso and it goes all sweet and gooey. I tried to make it last week – not quite up to restaurant style i have to say. Having people over – all the time but my husband does most of the cooking – I am the kitchen hand.
Oooh, wonder if this will work with Japanese eggplants too? I’ve finally found a good source for them here and I do think I prefer them to the Italian ones. Well, I love every eggplant!
I love eggplant and am always looking for new ways to add it to meals and throw in dishes. It looks awesome, cant wait to try it. We like to grill/bbq our eggplant and veggies, so we will be trying this soon with this recipe and then trying it with the grilled one!
Delicious Lorraine! It looks so rich and comforting. I love eggplant
We don’t have a dining table, or a dining area really
There is no room for it in our apartment now, but luckily we have a good sized balcony that can fit a table for 4 
Great vegetarian recipe Lorraine
damn I ve missed reading your posts! Things have been crazy for me ~ lol Mr Bao doesn’t think we need a dining table either but I really like inviting people over hehe 
Yum, yum, yum. I’ve just started back on weight watchers so this is the perfect dish for me. I’ll be using the water rather than oil, sob! It is like a Turkish ratatouille (which is my fav low cal meal at the moment).
I don’t have people over as much I would like as I hate doing dishes and we do not have a dishwasher.
The first time I had a dinner party when living with my partner we had roast lamb and veg for dinner and a lemon meringue pie for sweets. I used my mums old woman’s weekly card recipe and was so thrilled that I was able to replicate it as it was something we grew up eating.
We dont have people over as much at the moment but I rmeember the first time we had guests, I made a lamb shanks dish. It wasnt perfect, but it was a crowd pleaser so I kept my self critisism to myself lol
Love this recipe, and the photos are great. Had a trial run last week and will be using this for a dinner party tomorrow night.
Just one question – what’s the 1/2 a lemon for? It’s in the ingredients list, but never makes an appearance.
Hi Jason! Thank you so much
Oh I’m sorry! Just add it to the cooked vegetables in the pan 
I’ll amend it now!
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[...] at the moment and I sometimes don’t know what to do with. I came across this recipe for stuffed eggplant (imam bayildi) which I thought looked delicious. The ingredients were onions, garlic, tomatoes, capsicums, [...]
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