Patlıcan Kebabı

Patlıcan kebabı (also patlıcanlı kebap) belongs to the kebab tradition of southeastern Anatolia — Gaziantep above all, but also Şanlıurfa, Adıyaman and Hatay (Antakya). It has no fixed inventor or court pedigree; it reads as a home-and-kebab-house dish of the late-summer eggplant glut, when the season's aubergines are cheap and plentiful. In the Gaziantep dialect it is sometimes called balcan kebabı, balcan being the local word for eggplant. A living custom in Antakya and in Şanlıurfa's Birecik district is to assemble the tray at home, then carry it to the neighbourhood bakery to be finished in the wood-fired oven. Gaziantep holds well over a hundred geographical-indication registrations — for its baklava, pistachios, beyran and pepper paste among them — but patlıcan kebabı is not among the protected products, so it is best described simply as a defining Gaziantep eggplant-season kebab rather than a registered one.

Whole rounds of eggplant, skin striped off in bands, sit between knuckles of spiced lamb köfte on a flat skewer. The eggplant goes silky and almost custardy at the centre, edged with char; the meat is browned, loose and juicy, carrying pepper paste and pul biber. Wedges of tomato burst into the juices, the long green peppers blister and sweeten. You pull eggplant, meatball and a smear of sauce into a torn piece of lavaş and eat it by hand, the bread soaking up fat the colour of brick.

Raw eggplant is roughly 90% water held in a spongy, air-filled flesh. As it heats, pectin and cellulose in the cell walls break down, the trapped water cooks off, and the open spaces left behind draw in the lamb fat rendering from the köfte beside it — so the fat that would otherwise drip away instead seasons and enriches the eggplant from within, which is why tail fat or a fatty lamb mince matters here. Alternating meat and eggplant is the whole trick: the fat continuously bastes the eggplant while the eggplant's own moisture steams the köfte, so neither dries out. Salting the slices for about half an hour first pulls out water and partly collapses that sponge, so the flesh turns creamy rather than greasy and bitterness leaches away with the drawn-out juice. The köfte is kneaded until the mince turns tacky, which extracts myosin and lets the meatballs hold their shape on the skewer without crumbling.