Patlican

Patlican is a Turkish word for "eggplant". Eggplant , Aubergine or Patlican has a special place in Turkish cuisine. It is said that Patlican of Turkey with its brown-green cap, velvety purple skin, firm and slim body, has a richer flavor than that of its relatives found in other countries. There are a lot of Turkish dishes which uses Patlican as an ingredient. Patlican is used in various Turkish dishes, such as Kitir Patlican, Alinazik, and many more.

In Germany, the Patlican which can be bought in the vegetables markets or supermarkets are big and round and so fresh, mostly coming from Turkey and Spain. But sometimes it is Hard to find them, but just find a Turkish vegetable market and you will have them when in season. What we have in the Philippines are long and slender type. We almost cook the eggplant the same way as Turkey except that we never use yoghurt or cream with our eggplant dishes. In the Philippines, we grill or roast them, we make it a salad with only tomatoes and vinegar as dressing. It is also one of the most frequently used vegetables in the Philippines since it is cheap and versatile. Seeing the wonderful recipes from Turkey and Greece using eggplant makes me appreciate the eggplant more. We grew up with almost just grilled eggplant omelette (Tortang Talong) or potato omelette as our lunch and I was so ashamed to show it to my classmates, now I am proud to have such a great mom who invented a lot of eggplant dishes so we can survive.