Delicious over white rice but even more delicious over challah with tahini.
Eggplant media (Photo: Matan Chopin)
"My grandmother, who cooked Damascene-Jewish cuisine, used to prepare media only on the basis of eggplants," says Sigi Mantel, cook and author of the book "Blessed be your hands", third generation of a family that immigrated to Israel from Syria.
There are indeed different versions of the dish, and the most famous one is based on zucchini, but in Sigi's recipe, which remains faithful to her grandmother's method, the meat is paired with slices of eggplant.
The dish is usually served at Shabbat meals or holiday eves, usually over rice and in any case always with lemon wedges.
"Despite this," Sigi laughs, "my divine bite, which is how I also taught my children, is to take a slice of Shabbat challah, spread it in tahini, place it on top of medias, and sprinkle lemon juice over everything. Perfect."
Pair the meat with slices of eggplant, fry and cook in tomato sauce (photo: Matan Shopan)
Sigi Mentel and the wonderful medias pot that she learned to make from her grandmother, were hosted at Cafe Asif as part of a new tradition at the place - "home pot".
Every Tuesday, home or professional chefs from all over the country and from all food cultures in Israel are hosted for a special lunch service.
Each week, a different chef will cook a big, comforting pot of his house instead.
Apart from Mantel, so far the chef and baker Rinat Tzdok have been guests in Cafe Asif's kitchen with a pot of chicken and chard meatballs alongside couscous, as well as Eilat chef Brigitte Chopin who served up Tunisian meatballs.
Today (6.12) Gil Akerman is hosting at the venue with chickpea meatballs in lemon sauce, chard, white wine and saffron and later Nissim Zelait, Barak Aharoni, Aviad Peled and more will be hosting.
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Eggplant media (Photo: Matan Chopin)
Ingredients
For the eggplants and the sauce:
2 peeled eggplants
1 box of tomato paste (100 grams)
3 ripe tomatoes, grated
1 buckwheat
½ lemon squeezed for juice
Salt
Ground black pepper
Canola oil for frying
For meatballs:
500 grams of ground beef
1 grated onion
1 ½ slices of white bread without the crust, soaked and squeezed well
1 egg
1 tablespoon olive oil
salt to taste
Ground black pepper to taste
To submit:
Lemon cut into segments
rice (optional)
For the conversion table click here >
Preparation
How do you make eggplant media?
1 Slice the peeled eggplants into 1 cm thick slices, salt on both sides and place in a wide strainer for fifteen minutes so that they absorb liquids. After that, wipe well with absorbent paper.
2 At the same time, prepare the meatballs: mix well all the meatball ingredients.
3 Cut the meat mixture into meatballs with a volume of about a tablespoon (meatballs should be made as many slices of eggplant).
Attach and fasten each meatball to one eggplant slice.
4 Heat canola oil for semi-deep frying in a large pan over a medium-high flame.
When the oil is very hot (but not smoking), fry the eggplant slices with the meat facing down (in the direction of the oil) and brown well (frying in this way causes the meat to "stick" to the eggplant slice).
Carefully turn the slices over and fry until brown on the other side.
Transfer to absorbent paper.
5 Arrange the fried eggplant and meat slices in a low and wide pot, this time with the meat facing up.
6 Mix the tomato paste, grated tomatoes, water, salt and black pepper and pour into the pot.
Place the pot over a medium flame and bring to a boil.
Pour in the lemon juice, cover, lower the flame to low and cook for about an hour.
7 Serve on top of rice and lemon wedges on the side.
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