Stuffed eggplant and the 12 foot window

Image by Brooklyn Museum via Flickr

Long ago, before I went to medical school, Monsieur Latte and I took a trip to Turkey. This was one of our best trips. There were so many wonderful, colorful, aromatic moments. Istanbul is amazing. (I haven't had a lot of coffee yet, so bear with my turgid writing.) We felt as though we were in wonderland.

One wonderful evening we "spent a little extra" on dinner. That means we probably dropped $20 for the two of us including alcohol. We sat one evening on top of a rooftop restaurant, about 3 or 4 stories high, in the lovely, sparkly Istanbul weather. We looked out over the old City, the Sultanahmet, right across from the Blue Mosque. I had one of my ten best meals ever, stuffed eggplant. Two things, in fact. On that trip, even though (as usual) Monsieur Latte drove me crazy it became absolutely clear to me that I couldn't be separated from him. Ever. We weren't married yet and he was living in Connecticut, but I'd figured out bigger problems.

I also fell head over heels completely gaga crazy for eggplant on that trip. Monsieur et the Aubergine. They are still with me.

Monsieur and I live in a house with a 12 foot window in the living room. Try covering that for $100. We've been limping along for sometime with an Overstock.com meets Lowe's solution and I tire of it. What to do? Well, I was just having a chat with Google about it, and one thing led to another and I found a new cookbook. Not only that, I found a GORGEOUS new cookbook with a recipe for stuffed eggplant.

For a moment, at 7:14 this morning, gazing at the picture I clicked on a lark, Google sent me on a virtual magic carpet back 15 years ago to a rooftop restaurant with my beloved, kooky, neurotic Monsieur, in a far away place surrounded by exotic, ancient, enormous buildings, enveloped in a scented, silky cocoon of eggplant. A land before children, patients, sick parents. I'd never seen a leg amputated. I'd never delivered a baby. I'd never fallen in love with the chortle of my own babies. I didn't want to go back for long, but my, my, what a way to start a day.

Here's the recipe, in case you're interested.

Vefa Alexiadou's Meet Stuffed Eggplants Recipe

Few more cookbook links:

Vefa's kitchen (there are links here at Phaidon to recipes)
Amazon (with a few pics of the inside of the book)