Patlıcan pehlisi, the dish that sets its stamp on the summer tables of Amasya cooking, is a heavy and filling oven dish in which aubergines from the region's fertile gardens meet lamb. Lightly fried aubergines are laid in a baking tray, boiled bone-in lamb, tomato and green pepper are arranged on top, and the whole is baked until the meat has browned and the liquid has been absorbed. Simple as the recipe looks on paper, every stage of it, from the cutting, soaking and frying of the aubergines to the separate cooking of the meat, follows an established method. For this reason pehli is known in Amasya less as an everyday vegetable dish than as a dish for guests and special occasions. In the summer months, when aubergines are plentiful, it remains one of the most sought-after plates both in homes and at the tables of feast days and invitations.

In recent years the dish's reputation has been confirmed by official recognition. On 5 April 2022 the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office registered Amasya Patlıcan Pehli as a geographical indication in the form of a designation of origin by provenance (mahreç işareti), making it the province's ninth product with a geographical indication. Because the registration fixed in writing which ingredients, in what quantities and in what order the dish is to be prepared with, it also meant that a body of kitchen knowledge handed down by word of mouth from generation to generation had acquired a written standard.

Patlıcan Pehlisi within Amasya Cuisine

Amasya stands in the Yeşilırmak basin, on the threshold where Central Anatolia meets the Black Sea, and its cuisine bears the mark of this position. Researchers find in the city's food culture both the grain- and meat-based dishes of Central Anatolia and a breath of the vegetable and wild-greens dishes of the Black Sea. A military, commercial and cultural centre in the Seljuk, Ilkhanid and Ottoman periods, and known as the City of Princes because so many Ottoman princes were raised there, Amasya enriched its table through this long urban past. Local accounts often stress that, under a taste for refinement that grew up around the princely palace, Amasya produced dishes "worthy of sultans" in flavour, appearance and quality.

According to the list compiled by the Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism, Amasya's meat dishes include bakla dolması, etli bamya, keşkek, ciğer sarması, göbek dolması, madımak, mıhlama, mumbar, işkembe, pastırmalı pancar, pastırma pağallemesi, pirpirim, sirkeli ciğer and sulu köfte, and alongside them patlıcan pehli. The list shows that in the city's cuisine pehli is thought of as belonging to the meat dishes rather than to the vegetable dishes. Indeed, the dish's centre of gravity is as much the lamb as the aubergine; the aubergine softens as it absorbs the fat and juices of the meat, while the meat passes its own flavour to the fried face of the aubergine.

Another distinctive feature of Amasya cooking is the drying and storing for winter of vegetables that are abundant in summer. The aubergine is one of the chief vegetables of this tradition as well. In this respect pehli stands apart from other aubergine dishes as the dish that represents the season when the aubergine is fresh and at its fullest. While pehli is baked in ovens until the end of summer, in the same houses aubergines are thinly sliced, threaded on strings and dried in the sun, so that preparation for the winter table begins in the middle of summer.

The Name Pehli and Its Meaning

The dish takes its name from the cut of meat used. Compilations on the cuisine of Sivas state that the word "pehli" means the two sides of the body, and record that the dish is made from the rib and breast section of the sheep. In Tokat, by contrast, the piece of meat placed on top of a pilaf is called pehli; the dish prepared by arranging pieces of meat, marinated in yoghurt and fried in butter, on a chickpea pilaf therefore bears the name "pehlili pilav". Both usages show that pehli was originally the name of a cut of meat, and that the dish took its name from this meat.

The naming in Amasya fits this information exactly. In the registration document and in the compilations of the provincial culture directorate, the basic meat of the dish is described as "mutton from the rib section" or "bone-in lamb ribs". The name patlıcan pehlisi thus comes to mean something like "rib meat cooked with aubergine". The fact that the element most stressed in making the dish specific to Amasya is bone-in lamb suggests that this link between name and content is still keenly felt in the region.

For this reason tray dishes in which aubergines are layered with a minced-meat filling and baked should not be confused with pehli. Aubergine dishes made with minced meat are known in many regions of Turkish cuisine and are delicious in their own right; but in Amasya the name pehli is given to the dish prepared with pieces of rib, shoulder or loin, and the geographical indication registration likewise takes this form as its basis.

Geographical Indication Registration

The application for a geographical indication for Amasya Patlıcan Pehli was filed on 14 July 2021 by the Yeşilırmak Basin Development Union. After examining the application, the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office registered the dish on 5 April 2022 as a designation of provenance in the "Dishes and soups" product group. A designation of provenance is the type of registration that recognises a product's link to a particular geographical area in terms of reputation and method of production; it does not require all of the ingredients to come from that area, but it does require production to follow the method described in the registration.

The registration was presented to the public at a ceremony held on 17 May 2022. It was attended by officials of the Central Black Sea Development Agency, the Governor of Amasya Mustafa Masatlı, members of the provincial protocol, and representatives of the chamber of tradesmen and craftsmen and of the chamber of commerce and industry. In his speech Governor Masatlı said that geographical indications were of great importance for registering a city's distinctive products and for protecting their taste, form and method of production in keeping with the original. According to the governor, Amasya Etli Çiçek Bamyası Yemeği, Amasya Toyga Çorbası, Amasya Baklalı Dolma and Amasya Çöreği had first received their registration certificates; with Amasya Patlıcan Pehli the number of the province's geographically indicated products reached nine, and work was then under way on twenty-four more.

The Culinary Programme of Amasya University's Vocational School of Social Sciences also took part in the presentation. One of the programme's students, İkbal Öztürk, introducing the dish, explained that Amasya had been home to many civilisations throughout its history, had served as a school for princes in the Ottoman period, and that its dishes too had been influenced by these cultures. According to Öztürk, foremost among the features that made pehli specific to Amasya was bone-in lamb. She added that the dish was usually served on special occasions and at invitations, that its preparation required skill, that bone-in lamb ribs or boneless shoulder and loin were used, and that care was taken for the aubergines to be seedless.

With this registration pehli took its place among Amasya's geographically indicated products alongside Amasya Misket Apple, Amasya Çiçek Bamyası, Amasya Etli Çiçek Bamyası Yemeği, Merzifon Keşkeği, Amasya Toyga Çorbası, Amasya Bakla Dolması and Amasya Çöreği. Of these, Merzifon Keşkeği had been registered in 2014, Amasya Çiçek Bamyası in 2018 and Amasya Misket Apple in 2019. The other registrations in the dishes group fall in the same period as pehli, in the year 2021, which points to a concerted effort carried out within a short time to document the region's cuisine.

The Registered Recipe and Ingredients

The recipe on which the geographical indication document is based gives the following quantities for a tray serving five: 1.5 kilograms of lamb, 1.5 kilograms of aubergine, half a litre of sunflower oil, a litre of water or cow's milk or a mixture of the two, two tomatoes, 150 grams of fresh sweet green pepper, 5 grams of black pepper and 20 grams of salt. For the meat, bone-in lamb ribs or boneless lamb shoulder or loin are preferred, and the two may also be used together. Particular care is also taken that the aubergines be seedless.

An older compilation based on the Amasya Mutfağı (Amasya Cuisine) book prepared by the provincial governorship gives somewhat different quantities: six aubergines, a glass of vegetable oil, four tomatoes, a kilogram of mutton from the rib section, black pepper and salt. In this recipe there is no green pepper and the meat appears as mutton rather than lamb. In the recipe for six reproduced in the study on Amasya's gastronomic tourism potential published in 2022 by Erdal Ünsalan and Kenan Pala of Amasya University, 500 grams of lamb ribs, five large aubergines, four green peppers, three tomatoes, a tea glass of vegetable oil, two cloves of garlic, black pepper and salt are used. These small differences in quantity show that the same dish lives on in hands that vary from house to house; the basic arrangement, however, is the same in all three recipes: fried aubergine, boiled rib meat, tomato and the oven.

Preparation

Preparing the Meat

In the registered method the lamb ribs are cut so that three rib bones remain in each piece. If boneless shoulder or loin is to be used, the meat is opened out and divided into three pieces, then cut into pieces of the desired size. The meat is put into a pot and first cooked until it has released its own juices and reabsorbed them. Boiling water is then added to cover the meat, the lid of the pot is closed, and the meat is simmered in this water until tender. The compilation of the provincial culture directorate advises that the rib meat be boiled "in a little water"; the concentrated stock obtained in this way is later poured into the tray and binds the flavour of the dish. In the recipe given by Ünsalan and Pala, twenty minutes of boiling is considered sufficient for the coarsely chopped rib meat.

Cutting and Soaking the Aubergines

The aubergines are peeled alaca, that is, in stripes. Leaving the skin on in stripes gives the cooked dish its characteristic mottled look. The common cut in the region is to divide each aubergine first lengthwise into three, then crosswise into three. In the registered recipe the aubergine is first divided into three cylindrical pieces, and these are cut lengthwise into rectangular slices. The cut aubergines are left to soak to draw out their bitterness. In home recipes this is done for about twenty minutes in well-salted water, while in the registered method the aubergines are left for about an hour in a mixture of half milk and half water to which roughly 10 grams of salt has been added. They are then taken out of the mixture, washed in clean water, drained and dried.

Soaking in milky water is one of the details that distinguishes the registered recipe from similar dishes. In the Amasya manner it is valued that the aubergine should not soak up too much oil and should be fried in moderation, so that the dish does not become heavy and the aubergine's own taste comes to the fore. Even so, the registration document explicitly describes pehli as a "rather oily" dish, and the half-litre measure of sunflower oil confirms this.

Frying and Baking

The dried aubergines are fried in sunflower oil in a sufficiently large frying pan until they turn pinkish-golden, and are arranged in a tray. Older compilations speak of the aubergines being fried "lightly" and "laid" in the tray; in other words, the aubergines cover the bottom of the tray like a bed. Peeled tomatoes cut into rings are added on top. The boiled lamb is arranged on this bed of aubergine and tomato, about a glass of stock is poured into the tray, salt and black pepper are sprinkled over, and the dish is garnished with green pepper and slices of tomato. In the registered recipe the oven temperature is about 180 degrees and the baking time around twenty minutes; the aim is for the top of the meat to brown and for the liquid in the tray to be absorbed. The measure in home recipes is the same: the dish is baked until the meat has browned and the liquid has been absorbed.

During cooking the dish must not be stirred too much and the aubergines must not be crushed. In a well-cooked pehli the aubergine slices keep their shape, soften as they absorb the juices of the meat and tomato, and are left slightly browned at the edges. The softness of the aubergine, the full flavour of the lamb and the sweetness of the tomato together carry the plenty of the summer gardens onto the plate.

Serving

The registration document recommends that pehli be served hot and eaten while hot; the recipes in older compilations likewise end with the note "serve hot". At Amasya's traditional table for guests, rice pilaf follows the meat course, and for this reason pehli is usually thought of together with pilaf. Being a rather oily and filling dish, it generally appears at table as part of a sequence made up of soup, börek and dessert.

The Table for the Honoured Guest and Ceremonial Meals

To understand pehli's true place in Amasya's culture one has to look at the city's tradition of hospitality. According to local accounts, the people of Amasya like to see a guest at their table at every meal; if there is no guest at a given meal, they invite a poor man, or even a holy fool, to their table and share their food with him. A guest arriving from outside, usually to stay the night, is called an "ağır misafir", an honoured guest, and the table laid for him must always have six dishes. These dishes, whose kind hardly ever changes, are, in order of serving, toyga soup, bütün et (whole roast meat), rice pilaf, sinisu böreği, okra and dessert. The dessert is one of tırtıl baklava, kuymak or gömlek kadayıfı.

In summer, patlıcan pehlisi takes the place of the whole roast meat at this table. This small detail clearly shows the dish's standing in the region: pehli is held valuable enough to stand in for the main meat course at Amasya's most distinguished table for guests. Academic studies, too, refer to pehli made with aubergine and lamb as the region's dish for the honoured guest. That a meat dish cooked with aubergine in its season should take the place of the whole roast also shows that the Amasya table was arranged according to the season.

Pehli is also mentioned among Amasya's ceremonial meals. At the thanksgiving meal given by the head of the household to the relatives who had seen off pilgrims returning from the Hijaz, there were toyga soup, pehli or whole roast meat, pilaf, dates and Zamzam water. Here too pehli and the whole roast appear as two great meat dishes that can take each other's place. Other ceremonies such as the velime, the wedding and the bride's bath have menus of their own; in these lists pehli appears as the meat dish of the great tables for guests and for thanksgiving.

Other Faces of the Aubergine in Amasya Cuisine

In Amasya cuisine the aubergine is not confined to pehli. Besides the dishes made with fresh aubergine in summer, patlıcan kurusu, dried aubergine obtained by peeling the aubergines in stripes, slicing them thinly, threading them on strings and drying them in the sun, is one of the well-known ingredients of the region's cooking. In winter these dried slices are boiled and drained, sautéed in butter with onion and minced meat, cooked over a low flame with cracked wheat, that is, dövme, and tomato paste added, and brought to the table with garlic yoghurt poured over them. Thus the aubergine that goes into pehli in summer returns to the table in winter in an entirely different guise.

Patlıcan çullaması, prepared with roasted aubergine, is a meze known in other regions as aubergine purée or aubergine salad, and in Amasya it is often eaten especially alongside meat dishes. Patlıcanlı pilav, aubergine pilaf, listed among the pastries and pilafs, also shows how widespread the same vegetable is in the city's cuisine. Within this variety pehli stands out as the use in which the aubergine is most closely joined with meat, the "heaviest" and the most ceremonial.

Amasya's fruit and vegetable gardens have been famous for centuries. It is often recalled that travellers describing the city spoke of forty kinds of pear, eleven kinds of cherry, seven kinds of grape and seven kinds of quince; the Misket apple, for its part, has become the symbol of the city. This garden culture along the Yeşilırmak made possible both the abundance of fresh vegetables in summer and the continuity of dried vegetables in winter. Patlıcan pehlisi is foremost among the dishes that carry this garden culture directly onto the table.

Pehli in Neighbouring Cuisines

Dishes called pehli are not cooked in Amasya alone; in the cuisines of Sivas, Tokat and Kayseri too there are dishes bearing the same name, close to one another but differing in detail. This closeness suggests that pehli is an old meat dish shared across a broad belt between Central Anatolia and the Central Black Sea, which each city has worked out in its own manner. The distinctiveness of the Amasya pehli, secured by registration, is also better understood through this comparison.

Sivas pehli, one of the old dishes, is made with bone-in pieces of meat taken from the rib and breast section of the sheep. Yoghurt and black pepper are rubbed onto the meat, cut into pieces the size of a hand; the meat is fried in butter and then cooked with a little water until it comes away from the bone. The aubergines, peeled in stripes and chopped, are soaked in salted water with lemon and fried in butter together with peppers; the meat is arranged on top of these vegetables, the stock is poured over, tomato is added, and the dish is cooked over a low flame or in the oven. In Sivas pehli is also sometimes served without vegetables, beside a rice pilaf made with the meat stock.

In Tokat, pehli is the name for pieces of meat marinated in yoghurt and fried in butter that are placed on top of a chickpea pilaf, and the dish is known as "pehlili pilav". In the same city "pehlili patlıcan", made with beef, aubergine, boiled chickpeas, tomato paste, butter, onion, tomato, lemon, green chilli pepper and cumin, also appears in studies on the cuisine of Tokat. In the Kayseri pehli, half a rack of lamb ribs is browned evenly on both sides in olive oil; aubergines cut into finger shapes and soaked in salted water are mixed with onion, tomato, pepper, garlic and paste and put into a tray, the ribs are placed in the middle of the tray, and the dish is baked covered in the oven for two hours.

Compared with these examples, the distinctive features of the Amasya pehli become clear. In Amasya the meat is not marinated in yoghurt, but is cooked first in its own juices and then in boiling water; the aubergine is soaked in salted milky water and fried in sunflower oil; the dish contains no tomato paste, onion or chickpeas, and its flavour comes from fried aubergine, lamb, stock, tomato and green pepper. Its time in the oven is also short, since the meat and aubergine are largely cooked before they go into the tray. This simplicity reflects an approach in Amasya cooking that brings forward the ingredients' own taste.

Efforts to Keep Pehli Alive

In recent years there has been a sustained effort in Amasya to compile and promote the region's dishes. With the support of the Governorship of Amasya, a competition of Ottoman palace dishes was held in July 2008 with the participation of professional chefs from the country's leading hotels. The Amasya Mutfağı book published by the governorship is also one of the principal compilations of the region's dishes, and the most frequently consulted classic recipe for patlıcan pehlisi is based on this book. In the project "Amasya Cuisine Becomes a Brand in Gastronomy", carried out by Amasya Municipality between March and May 2021 with the support of the Central Black Sea Development Agency, the city's dishes were also compiled and their recipes written down, with the aim of handing them on to future generations and promoting them nationally and internationally.

The Culinary Programme of Amasya University's Vocational School of Social Sciences is also part of this effort. The programme's students have organised street-food festivals together with local tradesmen, presented the region's dishes to the public during the Turkish Cuisine Week events of 21–28 May 2022, and won places in national and international competitions with Amasya dishes. The programme's academics also publish studies on Amasya cuisine; these studies note that some dishes specific to the region have been falling into oblivion under the influence of modern life and commercial cooking, and that institutions are working to protect and promote them.

After the registration, pehli also became the direct subject of Turkish Cuisine Week events. On 23 May 2025 the "Amasya Patlıcan Pehli Regional Dish Competition" was held on the Şehzadeler Promenade, in cooperation between the Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism, the Amasya Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Amasya Union of Chambers of Tradesmen and Craftsmen and the Amasya Tourism Association. Anyone living within the provincial borders of Amasya who had reached the age of eighteen and did not cook professionally could take part. Competitors were required to prepare the dish in accordance with the recipe in the geographical indication registration, in a quantity serving at least five; those who did not follow the recipe were to be disqualified.

According to the regulations, competitors were to cook their dishes at home, bring them to the competition area with their own equipment and present them to the jury in person. During the presentation they were also required to answer the jury's questions about how the dish was made and the ingredients used. In the assessment, the taste of the dish and the recipe's faithfulness to local tradition, that is, to the original, were each to be scored out of thirty points, and attention to cleanliness and hygiene and the appearance and presentation of the dish out of twenty points each, and the dishes were to be distributed to the public after the jury's assessment. Giving faithfulness to the original the same weight as taste clearly shows the purpose of the registration: that the dish should live on in its documented form, without being transformed according to changing tastes.

Patlıcan pehlisi still lives on today in Amasya as one of the principal dishes of the summer months and of the table for guests. The patient boiling of the rib meat in a separate pot, the soaking of the aubergine in milky water and its moderate frying, and the bringing of everything together in a short bake explain why the dish is regarded as a task that demands skill. This oven dish, which calls for labour and patience, is a fine example of the region's deep-rooted bond with its soil and its seasons, and of a culinary outlook that seeks flavour within simplicity.

Chronology

2008: With the support of the Governorship of Amasya, a competition of Ottoman palace dishes is held in July.

2014: Merzifon Keşkeği is registered as a designation of provenance on 30 December.

2019: Amasya Misket Apple is registered as a designation of origin on 14 March.

2021: The project "Amasya Cuisine Becomes a Brand in Gastronomy" is carried out between March and May; on 14 July the Yeşilırmak Basin Development Union applies for a geographical indication for Amasya Patlıcan Pehli.

2022: On 5 April Amasya Patlıcan Pehli is registered as a designation of provenance and becomes the province's ninth geographically indicated product; on 17 May the registration is presented at a ceremony; Turkish Cuisine Week events take place on 21–28 May.

2025: On 23 May the Amasya Patlıcan Pehli Regional Dish Competition is held on the Şehzadeler Promenade.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Official sources

Other sources

Online sources