’The Gentle Kebap’ (Lamb and Smoked Eggplant)

The literal translation of the Turkish name for this dish is ‘gentle Ali’, leading to the theory that the creator was a chef named Ali. More likely, though, the name is a corruption of ala nazik (good and gentle) or eli nazik (gentle hand). In the land of dubious etymologies, the name is often said to have come from an event in the early 1500s, when Sultan Selim I ate a dish of eggplant and lamb and asked: ‘What gentle hand made this?’ Hopefully the answer was a good chef n