The aubergine is described both as the shah of vegetables and the meat of the poor, since due to its flavour and versatility it is the vegetable prized above all others in Turkish cuisine. Particularly in the summer months its privileged status is unrivalled, both in regional cooking and in the haute cuisine of the cities. Nearly two hundred different dishes, including pickles and even jam, are made from aubergines. In the past when the aubergine season arrived the constant frying and broiling of aubergines was held responsible for many of the fires which spread through Istanbul's neighbourhoods of wooden houses like a whirlwind in dry weather, and edicts were issued forbidding aubergines to be brought into Istanbul for sale.

India is generally thought to be the original homeland of the aubergine, which is an annual herbaceous plant in temperate climes and a perennial in tropical regions. There are scores of cultivated varieties, the most common grown in Turkey being the kemer patlican which is curved and slender in shape, 20 cm long, dark purple in colour and has few seeds; the Halkapinar patlican, which tapers to a point, is not as glossy, and has soft flesh; the bostan patlican, which is globular, either dark purple or mottled, and firm-fleshed; and the kirmasti patlican, which is 12-17 cm in length and dark purple.

Medical history is also full of references to aubergines, which were used to treat poor appetite, indigestion, clogged arteries, haemorrhoids, eye diseases and melancholy.

Turkey's Aegean, Mediterranean and southeast Anatolian cuisines are where aubergine dishes reign supreme, and in the province of Gaziantep in southeast Anatolia aubergine dishes almost form a cuisine of their own, outdoing even the ubiquitous tomato in levels of consumption. So that this favourite vegetable is available at every time of year, aubergines are dried for winter use, and strings of aubergines like purple necklaces can be seen hung on house walls throughout the province. Before drying they are either cut in half and hollowed out for stuffing, or cut into cubes for other dishes.

The dish known as sikilmihsi (a corruption of seyh'l-muhsi, meaning the wise man of stuffed food) which is recorded in an 18th-century cookery book, and all the many other distinctive aubergine dishes are the pride of Gaziantep cuisine.

* Ömer Faruk Serifoglu is a freelance writer.