Turlu is a mixed vegetable stew in Albanian and Turkish Cuisine. Meat is added as well, either stew or ground meat and its optional you may make it vegetarian if you like.
Rice is served on the side along with yogurt for those who like it, my children do! Its a healthy stew filled with a variety of veggies, tasty too!
There is no real measurements for this recipe, when I go to the grocery store I just grab the fresh green beans and okra, so I checked my receipt to give you an idea of how much you need, and the green beans came to 0.365 kg and the okra came to 0.425 kg so both don’t even come to a full lb!
I made the red pepper paste optional, I often use it as it gives food so much flavour. If you don’t have any that is ok you can make with out.
What you will need:
- 2 small zucchini’s
- 1 small eggplant
- 1 onion
- 1 clove garlic
- fresh okra
- fresh green beans
- 1 tbsp tomato paste
- 2 tbsp red pepper paste (optional)
- 1 cup good quality tomato sauce ( I use my homemade sauce)
- 1/2 lb stew meat or ground beef
- water
- olive oil
First clean your veggies, remove ends from both the green beans and okra, cut them up for the stew. I like to partially peel my zucchini and eggplant, you may fully peel or not, chop into chunks. Chop onion and garlic.
Heat large pot and saute the onion and garlic, add the meat and break up ground beef if using, add in the pepper paste and tomato paste. Make a space in the middle of pot and add some more olive oil and let the okra cook in the oil, then add the green beans and let them cook in the oil as well.
Add in the zucchini and eggplant and pour in the tomato sauce, pour over some water till it covers the veggies, stir together with wooden spoon. Cover with lid and bring to a boil, lower the heat to low (3 on the dial for glass top) let it cook for 2 and 1/2 hours till veggies are tender. Season with salt and pepper mid way cooking.
The recipe looks great! Always on a search to get more veggies in my diet.