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A Turkish dish, and one of my favourites - the red pepper sauce is beautiful and it makes me wonder where else you can utilise this delicious concoction. We often leap to a tomato sauce, and indeed, this stew is rich in tomato, but we rarely see a pepper sauce, and yet is just as flexible and adaptable. In my experience, pepper sauce is less prone to being overly acidic and thus simpler to work with. I would certainly recommend using this in my Halloumi and Roasted Pepper Pasta Recipe. Perhaps some experimenting is in order to make full use of this pepper sauce.
This particular recipe matches the sweet, spicy and unctuous pepper sauce with melting lamb.. but what really makes this stand out is the topping - another adaptation of a white bechamel sauce, just like the Tave Kosi recipe. This sauce starts off as a usual white sauce, but to it you add Parmesan, lemon and a heavy dosage of mashed up roasted aubergines. The silky aubergine suits this dish perfectly and matches well with the rich parmesan and the richness is cut through by the fresh lemon juice.
A note about the prep time:
It may look like a lot of prep time, but you can roast a large amount of peppers at once and the pepper sauce will easily last a week in the fridge.
Equally, you could put any extra roast peppers or aubergines aside for another dish; so see it as a time saver and trust me, it's worth it for this dish.
It makes sense to roast the aubergine and peppers at the same time. In my method I will list them separately to avoid confusing the two different parts of the recipe.
Serves: 4
Prep Time: 40 minutes
Cooking Time: 80 minutes
Ingredients
For the red pepper paste
4 roasted red peppers
50g tomato purée
½ tsp salt
1 tsp cayenne pepper
3 tbsp olive oil
For the lamb stew
500g boned lamb shoulder, cut into 3-4cm chunks
red pepper paste
1 tbsp sundried tomato paste
2 onions - diced
4 garlic cloves - chopped or grated
2 green peppers - cubed
3 medium sized tomatoes - chopped
Handfull or dried oregano
Parsely - to serve
For the aubergine purée/bechamel sauce
4 medium aubergines
40g butter
40g plain flour
400ml of full-fat milk
100g Parmesan cheese, grated
1 lemon - juice only
Method
Preheat the oven to 220C
For the red pepper paste, rub the peppers in olive oil,
For the red pepper paste, roast the peppers for 20-30 minutes until dark and softened. Transfer to a bowl and cover with cling film, then leave until cool enough to handle. Remove the charred skins, stalks and seeds. In a blender, blitz the red peppers with the remaining ingredients. Store for up to a week in a jar in the fridge.
Put the aubergines on a baking tray and bake whole for 25 minutes. When soft, remove from the oven and leave to cool.
For the lamb stew, warm half the olive oil in a large flameproof casserole pan over a high heat and brown the lamb in batches.
When browned, return all the lamb to the pan, add the red pepper and tomato pastes, the remaining olive oil, and the onion, garlic, chilli and green pepper. Reduce the heat to medium and cook until softened. Add the chopped tomatoes, oregano, salt and pepper, and finally the hot water. Bring to a simmer then turn down the heat, cover with the lid and allow to cook slowly for 1-1½ hours.
When cool enough to handle, peel the aubergines and mash the flesh with a fork.
In a pan over a medium heat, make a roux; melt the butter, add the flour and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes, then add the milk to give a thick white sauce. Mix in the aubergine, the grated cheese and lemon juice, and season with salt and pepper. Keep warm.
When the lamb is tender, check the sauce; it should be rich and thick. If it’s too runny, remove the lamb and reduce the liquid a little, then return the meat to the pan and warm through.
Serve the stew on top of the aubergine purée, scattered with parsley.