The Sultan’s Delight (Hünkar Beğendi)
Finally, a recipe to share after a year! Life gets in the way and it becomes difficult to spend time on blogging. My hünkar beğendi recipe has been waiting for almost a year to be published. Now that it’s eggplant season again, I thought it’s a good time to share it. You may be curious about the name of this recipe. It translates to “The Sultan Liked It”. One of the stories behind this recipe is that during the early 17 th century, Sultan Murad IV loved this recipe so much that it was named “Hünkar Beğendi” which means “The Sultan Liked It”. The other story says that the wife of Napoleon III, Empress Eugénie of France visited Istanbul as a guest of Sultan Abdulaziz in 1869 and this dish was on the menu as the Sultan was trying to impress Empress Eugénie. She loved the dish so much that she asked if her chef could go to Palace kitchen and learn to prepare this dish. The Empress’ chef couldn’t replicate the recipe as he said the Palace chef threw out his books, scales and etc. and sai...