Ingredients:
- 3 medium long eggplants 🍆 (Asian or Armenian)
- 2 pounds of ground beef 🥩
- 1 medium onion (finely ground)
- Black pepper & paprika (half a tsp)
- 1 tbsp of dried parsley, & basil 🌿
- Half a tsp of allspice
- 2 grated garlic 🧄 cloves
- Salt to taste
- 1 tsp of sumac
- Olive oil (half a cup)
For tomato 🍅 sauce:
- 5 large tomatoes 🍅 skinned and ground
- 3 tbsp of Armenian pepper 🌶️ paste
- 2 cloves of garlic 🧄
• You will need a round baking sheet
Directions:
- Wash and cut the eggplants in one and a half inch thick circles
- Baste the eggplants with olive oil on both sides and fry them in preheated oven until the colour is golden.
- For the meatballs, mix all the ingredients and make meatballs, matching the size of the round cut up eggplants
- Cook the tomato sauce separately with the pepper paste, Armenian hot pepper, and garlic
- At the bottom of the round pan, add half of the tomato sauce 🥫
- Start placing, in alternating order, eggplants and meatballs in upright position. Should be placed in a spiral 🌀 until reaching the centre.
- Pour the rest of the tomato sauce 🥫 over it
- Garnish with a few cloves of garlic 🧄 and small hot peppers of different colours (uncut). 🌶️
- Sprinkle with sumac
- Put in the preheated oven covered with foil
- The temperature of the oven should be 375 F.
- Leave in the oven for half an hour
- Remove the foil, raise the temperature to 400 F, and bake for another 20 minutes (uncovered).
- Take it out from the oven and let it rest for another 15 minutes
- Garnish with freshly chopped parsley 🌿 and coriander and serve hot
- Enjoy. 👩🍳